Beyond Talk Therapy: Using Movement and Expressive Techniques in Clinicial Practice

Beyond Talk Therapy: Using Movement and Expressive Techniques in Clinical Practice, edited by Daniel J. Wiener. 1999. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 1-55798-585-5. 309 pp.

What do the American Psychological Association, therapeutic rituals, psychodrama, advanced staccato breathing, and analytic music therapy have in common? The topics are collected in this carefully compiled scholarly volume, which was published by the APA.

Wiener engaged 14 practitioners, each an expert in his or her approach, to write the 13 chapters. Except for one, all chapters begin with a brief overview of the more general method and a rationale for the focal techniques presented, followed by a detailed transcription of two applications of the techniques) side by side with the practitioner's commentary. After that, each author systematically discusses his or her technique in terms of the following: population characteristics (indications/contraindications), handling resistance (variously defined), value of successive uses of the method, empirical support, desirable therapist characteristics, and recommended training. Each chapter ends with references and additional resources.

The book represents a unique and substantial contribution, in both the broad strokes and fine details of what it contains. In the forward, Wiener begins by discussing earlier marginalization of action approaches and their contemporary reemergence. In the appendix, which deserves to be more than that, Wiener finishes with a summary in which he compares the 26 techniques described in the 13 chapters. Here he makes the implicit comparisons of his systematic structure explicit with side-by-side descriptions of each method in a chart format that includes its purpose, modality (individual, family, etc.), minimum recommended level of training required to use the method, and indications and contraindications. Wiener also includes author and subject indexes.

I appreciated Wiener's parallel structuring of chapters, and I was struck by the usefulness of the volume as a jumping-off place for practitioners looking for new techniques and for researchers seeking new research ideas. The chapters contain descriptions that enable the practitioner to catch the gist and spirit of the technique and information about how to pursue further...