Some valuable information. As expected, uneven quality among articles. Some authors are stars; others are willingly lost in intergalactic dust clouds of jargon. Editors take a sink-or-swim approach to authors. For the non-specialist, the incomplete index (short on listings for particular items) and absence of a badly needed glossary impair the book's usefulness. All the same, I read it and took notes.

"Psychodrama with Trauma Survivors: Acting Out Your Pain" is a good overview of the current ways that the method of psychodrama is being used to treat survivors of trauma.

Some clinicians shy away from using experiential methods with survivors, particularly because the power of the method and its potential to produce regression. Yet many clinicians know that talk therapy, while providing symptomatic relief, often does not get to the deep healing that many survivors are seeking. When used responsibly and safely, experiential methods like psychodrama are better able to address experiences which are stored in the unconscious cubbyholes of our being that can hardly be accessed with verbal methods.

The book documents the impact of a variety of kinds of trauma -- war, physical and sexual abuse, significant loss, torture, addiction and traffic accidents among others -- and shows the various approaches of psychodramatists from around the world.

Of special interest are the chapters by French psychologist Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger, who has researched hidden transmission of trauma from generation to generation, and by co-editor Kate Hudgins, an American psychologist, who has developed the Therapeutic Spiral Model that identifies a number of inner roles that solidify within survivors as a result of the trauma.

Innovative work with juvenile and adult sexual offenders is also documented, as well as treatment with secondary victims of trauma, like family members of combat veterans and psychotherapists themselves.

Psychodrama is not a simple method so this information is less of a manual for clinicians who are not versed in this field. However, it offers a great window of possibilities for clinicians and others seeking new options for treatment.

This book probably deserves 3 1/2 stars but since I've got to go with round numbers I'd say 3 is closer to the truth than 4. I may have been influenced by the fact that I have read an awful lot of stuff on Cezanne, but I don't think so. This book was put out to coincide with an exhibition that has "finished/unfinished" as its theme i.e.-when is a painting truly "complete". The idea wears a bit thin after 400 pages. The book starts off with essays by about 5-6 people that take up the first 120 pages. The last couple of essays are interesting and contain some good ideas but the first several essays pretty much say the same thing over and over (many of Cezanne's paintings that were not actually finished are "complete" from an artistic standpoint) and if a couple of these essays had been left out no harm would have been done. The same point is hammered home in too many of the "mini-essays" that accompany each painting and sometimes the contributors get a bit carried away in seeing genius and "completion" in even the works that are clearly failures not only by Cezanne's own standards but also, I think, by the standards of the intelligent layperson and probably also of many art historians. The book does get high marks, though, for many high quality color reproductions and the Cezanne lover will be sure to find his/her favorite genre well-represented. You get many portraits as well as landscapes and those luscious still-lifes (my particular favorite). One of the interesting ideas contained in the book is that the reason the still-life seems to be the category where Cezanne really excelled is that the subject was the one best suited to his temperament. He was an extremely slow worker and did not like changes in the "motif". For example, he did not like it when human sitters would move and he did not like changes in the weather and in light conditions as the changes would make him rethink what he was doing and oftimes start over or have to make corrections. With the still-life Cezanne could arrange things just the way he wanted and could use artificial flowers that would not wither as he worked, etc. Also note that the book contains many works in watercolor, which is a medium that Cezanne excelled in. If you are not familiar with his watercolors I think you will be pleasantly surprised...