Speaker 1: The paradigm changes everything. Hope is the only positive emotion
Speaker 1: that requires negativity or uncertainty to be activated. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Dan Tomasulo
Speaker 1: on the show. Dan is a counseling psychologist, professor, and
Speaker 1: the academic director at the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute SMBI
Speaker 1: at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a PhD in psychology,
Speaker 1: an MFA and Writing, and a Masters of Applied Positive
Speaker 1: Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dan is also the
Speaker 1: author of several books, including American Snake Pit and Confessions
Speaker 1: of a Former Child, a therapist memoir. His latest book
Speaker 1: is called Learned Hopefulness. In this episode, I talked to
Speaker 1: Dan about psychodrama and Learned Hopefulness. Interventions have always focused
Speaker 1: on helping people recover from trauma, but Dan believes we
Speaker 1: can do more than that through psychodrama. When we reenact
Speaker 1: difficult experience is we can process and integrate trauma in
Speaker 1: a way that facilitates growth. It also teaches us to
Speaker 1: perceive obstacles differently, which is integral to learning hopefulness. I've
Speaker 1: been friends with Dan for a while and he's one
Speaker 1: of the most genuine, kindest and thoughtful humans. I know,
Speaker 1: I really hope you enjoyed this episode and you weren't
Speaker 1: a lot from him from the many areas that he's pioneered,
Speaker 1: including psychodrama. So I'm really excited to present Dan Tomasula,
Speaker 1: the legendary Dan Tomasula. Let's jump into this interview. Fabulous.
Speaker 1: You are a fascinating, fascinating guy, and with a someone
Speaker 1: like you, it's kind of like tricky to know where
Speaker 1: to start, but I will start here, and that's I
Speaker 1: would love to hear about your nineteen eighties improv experience
Speaker 1: and experience as a stand up comedian. Wow, what a
Speaker 1: place to start. Yeah, you know, I was always fascinated
Speaker 1: with comedy, and I guess my character strength of humor
Speaker 1: was always needed the tough Not that I really knew
Speaker 1: character strengths back then, but certainly that. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was so influenced by Robin William, Steve Martin is
Speaker 1: certainly Andy Kaufman, and they were breaking new ground. You
Speaker 1: look at George Carlin and I was a Lenny Bruce freak,
Speaker 1: and I thought, man, what a way to make a living, right,
Speaker 1: What a way to do it? Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: went to an open audition, I got a call back,
Speaker 1: and then got a second call back, and then then
Speaker 1: they put you on the schedule at the improv. But
Speaker 1: they have you doing the early crowd first, you know,
Speaker 1: before everybody gets loosened up, so you have to take
Speaker 1: time and develop your chops. But I had been a
Speaker 1: comedy writer before that, just writing jokes and trying to
Speaker 1: sell them, and you know, selling them to I don't know,
Speaker 1: Rodney Dagerfield or Philistiller. These are comics back in the day,
Speaker 1: you know. But when I finally got on stage, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god. You know, performance of any
Speaker 1: other kind, if you talk about music, if you talk
Speaker 1: about really any other performance, it could be three, four
Speaker 1: or five minutes before you get any feedback from the audience,
Speaker 1: right because but in comedy it's rarely longer than thirty
Speaker 1: seconds and usually closer to fifteen. So you're going to
Speaker 1: know right away how well you're doing. Well? Were you good?
Speaker 1: Were you good? I was good enough, let me put
Speaker 1: it that way. And I did get picked for the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary where they picked four of us to be
Speaker 1: the next generation of comics, and that was that's still
Speaker 1: floating around on the internet someplace. But it was good.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I had the chops for the
Speaker 1: lifestyle at that time. You know, I was finishing my PhD.
Speaker 1: And I was working five nights a week and not
Speaker 1: getting home till five in the morning, starting classes at
Speaker 1: eight thirty. And you can only do that when you're
Speaker 1: young and naive. Yes, yes, no, it's true, or you're
Speaker 1: old and famous already, yes, exactly. But I think I
Speaker 1: think you know the next part. You know why. I
Speaker 1: had a piece of my research published from a dissertation
Speaker 1: and it was Jerome Singer, who you know, obviously we
Speaker 1: share that in common. You know, Avit Yale who said
Speaker 1: you've got to go see the psychodramatists. And that's when
Speaker 1: deep love of psychology and performance and humor all came together,
Speaker 1: because it was like, I don't have to sacrifice and
Speaker 1: make a choice. I can move in this space. Yes,
Speaker 1: and he Jerome Singer legend in the study of imagery
Speaker 1: and psychodrama and daydreaming, the value of daydreaming. Were you
Speaker 1: a big daydreamer as a child? And oh, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the what I went to sleep
Speaker 1: is when I got some rest from daydreaming. That is
Speaker 1: actually quite hilarious. See that was funny, that was thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Who were some of the comics
Speaker 1: that you intersected with in the eighties that you personally met.
Speaker 1: There were a bunch. I mean even even that night,
Speaker 1: which was just you know, it was Joe Piscopal, Rob
Speaker 1: Williams showed up. They had. The person I had the
Speaker 1: most contact with though, was Andy Kaufman. Andy was there
Speaker 1: almost every night, and what would happen is around two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning is the end of the shows
Speaker 1: and the improv. Their model was Hell's Kitchen in the Hollywood.
Speaker 1: So I was right smack in the middle of Hell's
Speaker 1: Kitchen and all the comics would come back at two
Speaker 1: o'clock and from two to four or four thirty or
Speaker 1: five we'd play to each other. And comics are like
Speaker 1: the best in the worst audience. They'll laugh at anything,
Speaker 1: but if it's really not good, they just as soon.
Speaker 1: You know, Tossia in the street. Can I tell you
Speaker 1: a quick Andy Kauflin story? Oh please do he's my brother.
Speaker 1: Oh man. So one night Andy was regaling us with
Speaker 1: where he came up with fourign man, you know, now
Speaker 1: he was Elvis's most favorite impersonator, like Elvis saw him
Speaker 1: as his favorite impersonator. So he was talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that he left the improv one night after doing
Speaker 1: an Elvis bid, and you know how he ends it with,
Speaker 1: you know, thank you very much, you know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Well, he goes outside and about half a
Speaker 1: block up from the improv, he gets mugged by two
Speaker 1: guys with knives and he starts talking in this gibberish
Speaker 1: to them when they pull the knife out and even'st
Speaker 1: ev d. You know, he was doing the beginning of
Speaker 1: Foreign Man and they they said a couple of curse
Speaker 1: words and they walked away. And then as they're walking away,
Speaker 1: he still had Elvis in his head and he went,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, so the Elvis and thank you
Speaker 1: very much for the transition points. And another night he
Speaker 1: came in about two thirty in the morning with a
Speaker 1: bike gang and these were not from Central Casting. This
Speaker 1: was a bike gang and he walked in and a
Speaker 1: bunch of scroning comics were there, and he just walked
Speaker 1: right up on stage with them. I forgot who was
Speaker 1: on stage at the time, but he walked right up
Speaker 1: on there and he has his bongo drums and he
Speaker 1: just starts playing his drums and everybody is scared and
Speaker 1: laughing at the same time, which is really what he
Speaker 1: became known for. Right in the wrest lane and everything else.
Speaker 1: He came up on stage and he starts doing his
Speaker 1: bang of drums and he starts singing Whenever I feel afraid, right,
Speaker 1: whenever I feel afraid, I was at happy to And
Speaker 1: then he gets to the refrain and no one will suspect,
Speaker 1: and these guys in chorus all go, I'm afraid. Well
Speaker 1: we just about you know, lost it. It was so hysterical.
Speaker 1: He was on stage for less than three minutes. That
Speaker 1: was a Tuesday night, Saturday Night Live. He opens with
Speaker 1: that skit, Oh my god, that's funny. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: kind of trying it out. Yep, yep, he needed a
Speaker 1: little reheard and we were in I Love it. So
Speaker 1: you knew him personally, well, I wouldn't say he would
Speaker 1: know me if he saw me in the club, you
Speaker 1: know that kind of thing. It wasn't like, oh, Danny boy,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here, but they were, you know, but
Speaker 1: he was from he was not from this world. Man
Speaker 1: on the Moon was the right right movie about him.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, Jim Carrey, when did you get
Speaker 1: your dissertation? Like why do you why do you decide
Speaker 1: to go into psychology or into psychodrama? These are good questions,
Speaker 1: let's say, so give me a timeline here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you look at the late seventies, early eighties,
Speaker 1: and you look at my transcript from undergraduate, you would
Speaker 1: see that the only thing I was really good at
Speaker 1: was psychology, and so I had a's in that and
Speaker 1: not a's and other things. And then I got a
Speaker 1: job in the university mail room so that they could
Speaker 1: pay for my tuition. I was not on the scholarship,
Speaker 1: I'll say that, And so I took the courses, I
Speaker 1: did well in them, and then when I decided to
Speaker 1: go for the doctorate, it was really the fact that
Speaker 1: I had then gotten a job working with people with
Speaker 1: intellectual disabilities, who had special needs, and man, I found
Speaker 1: that nobody was doing any work with them in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, nobody, and I thought, oh, wow, I'm interested.
Speaker 1: I seemed good at this, or at least not bad
Speaker 1: at it, and perhaps I could study developmental psychology and
Speaker 1: you move forward, and so sure enough I did that,
Speaker 1: and right as I was finishing my dissertation is when
Speaker 1: all the comedy stuff was happening. So I was in
Speaker 1: the city a lot, living New Jersey, but it was
Speaker 1: in the city a lot, and my cousin who was
Speaker 1: going with to NYU for film, was running a bar
Speaker 1: called Kettle of Fish, famous dive bar in New York City,
Speaker 1: and he had been there forever but was also a
Speaker 1: heroin addict, and at that time he was in a
Speaker 1: METHODO maintenance program. But that was back when they were
Speaker 1: there was a ring of physicians selling drugs and so
Speaker 1: what ended up happening, they'd give you a double dose,
Speaker 1: you'd sell it on the street and you'd sell yours
Speaker 1: and then you know, get heroin. But he was just chipping.
Speaker 1: So what happened is we had dinner one night, I
Speaker 1: went did my comedy thing, then in the morning went
Speaker 1: to school. He went home and overdosed and so literally
Speaker 1: on a dime, I changed from wanting to be a
Speaker 1: researcher and developmental psychologist and wanting to be a clinician.
Speaker 1: So that was a really big change. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I think that also kind of squashed the not squashed,
Speaker 1: but evolved I should say the comedy thing into psychodrama.
Speaker 1: When when Jerome Singer pointed me in that direction, it
Speaker 1: was like somebody stuff I had always heard about, like
Speaker 1: things like split mothers and stuff like that. It was like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden I understood it because it was
Speaker 1: being enacted and I felt a true affinity for it.
Speaker 1: And then took the next thirteen years to get Now,
Speaker 1: where was this right here in New York? Right here
Speaker 1: in New York. It was at the time the Center
Speaker 1: for Sociotherapy. And this is so Marino, the founder of it,
Speaker 1: who was a contemporary of Frauds, was, I guess in
Speaker 1: his seventies at that point, and my trainers were like
Speaker 1: first generation trained by them. They had taken over the institute.
Speaker 1: Where did you encounter Jerome Singer? Then? In what context? So?
Speaker 1: I had written a piece of research on imagery as
Speaker 1: part of my dissertation, and it was criticizing somebody in
Speaker 1: his department. I think baseball start off, start off at
Speaker 1: the top and work your way down. And the criticism
Speaker 1: was just based on the fact that my findings were
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty degrees different than with this guy
Speaker 1: found and it had to do with memory and the
Speaker 1: use of bizarreness to facilitate memory, bizarre imagery like in
Speaker 1: mnemonics and that kind of stuff. And I had research
Speaker 1: did at developmental ages, so that the older the child got,
Speaker 1: the more you could use bizarre imagery in order to
Speaker 1: facilitate memory. So that's why things like Sesame Street at
Speaker 1: the time, which you know Jerome was a consultant for that. Right,
Speaker 1: there was all the big thing, all the big rage
Speaker 1: of all we could teach kids and get them to laugh,
Speaker 1: get them to have these bizarre images and then they
Speaker 1: would learn. And I was trying to investigate like what
Speaker 1: age that would work and not work? And basically what
Speaker 1: I found is that there was a peak at the
Speaker 1: ages where you could use the imagery to facilitate memory.
Speaker 1: And I had found that effect after let's say I
Speaker 1: don't remember it off the top of my heabit, let's
Speaker 1: say in three weeks. And this person was finding that
Speaker 1: there was no effect with the use of the imagery.
Speaker 1: And when I went there and was invited to do
Speaker 1: the presentation, he was very generous and very kind. He said, well,
Speaker 1: I measured it in six weeks, you measured it in three,
Speaker 1: So it's probably a bell curve. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: you caught it at the peak, which we didn't see
Speaker 1: because we measured it over here. So it was it
Speaker 1: was really not that I had found anything different, just
Speaker 1: that there was a peak point where it would facilitate memory,
Speaker 1: but afterwards it would disintegrate. Well, thanks for that little
Speaker 1: nerdy explanation of your sorry about that. Our audience was
Speaker 1: rapt attention. Well that's why I left research read that's
Speaker 1: exactly that's how we did it. Well, that's wonderful. At
Speaker 1: what point did you get an introduction to Willbrook? Because
Speaker 1: you did. You played a huge role in the deinstitutionalization
Speaker 1: of Willbrook and your memoir American Snake Pit is incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, that story is so touching. Can you tell
Speaker 1: people a little about that and the experimental group home
Speaker 1: and what you did there? Sure, Scott, really thank you
Speaker 1: so much for asking about that. You know, the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is I was not passionate about the
Speaker 1: folks or the job or the information. I did not
Speaker 1: start out with, oh, I have a mission. So when
Speaker 1: I got a job, you know, working in human services
Speaker 1: and working with the population that was really ignored for
Speaker 1: the most part, I was stunned that psychologist hadn't spent
Speaker 1: more time trying to understand what these folks need. And
Speaker 1: then I got pulled into it more. It was sort
Speaker 1: of like, oh, you know, I have whatever skills I
Speaker 1: have or whatever way of thinking about these things I have,
Speaker 1: but nobody else was really in that field except for
Speaker 1: a handful of folks at that time, and so little
Speaker 1: by little by little I was learning. And then also,
Speaker 1: you know, because I was trained in psychodrama, so it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's adding to the verbal therapy. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the studies from the seventies, they
Speaker 1: would say people with intellectual disabilities wouldn't profit from psychotherapy
Speaker 1: because it's too verbally loaded and they can't process cognitively,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So I was using psychodrama to kind
Speaker 1: of show all of that in the places I was working.
Speaker 1: But then has happened a few times in my academic career,
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting enough money to pay for the tuition.
Speaker 1: I had some scholarship, some this and that, but it
Speaker 1: was just a rough time financially. And this group called
Speaker 1: YAI was hiring, and they were hiring for somebody to
Speaker 1: run an experimental group home, and I basically talked myself
Speaker 1: into the job because there weren't anybody. There wasn't nobody
Speaker 1: else doing this, you know, no PhD type psychology students
Speaker 1: looking to do it. And so I talked myself into
Speaker 1: the job and then really found that I had bitten
Speaker 1: off more than I could chew because this was not
Speaker 1: people who had slight attention dilemmas. These were people who
Speaker 1: were polydiagnostic, intellectual, psychiatric, and usually a tertiary disability like blindness,
Speaker 1: auditory problems, difficulty walking, you know, something in addition to
Speaker 1: the other things. And then then I had to educate
Speaker 1: myself very quickly and start to see really what was
Speaker 1: going on at Wellbrook. So, you know, taking the tours,
Speaker 1: meeting the people, evaluating them, trying to put together a
Speaker 1: home where people could have a chance. Technically at the
Speaker 1: time in New York, they were just trying to throw
Speaker 1: money at it and make it go away. So I
Speaker 1: had a staff of about thirty people for ten residents, right,
Speaker 1: and then eventually we ended up with a staff of
Speaker 1: about four people for six residents. Because nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: work there. People would come in. So the idea was
Speaker 1: the state was going to throw a lot of money
Speaker 1: at this, have it fail, and then take the people
Speaker 1: back into the institution. This wasn't the first tier of
Speaker 1: people coming out or the second. This is what they
Speaker 1: called the third tier, which were the people who had
Speaker 1: all of these problems, and they were never supposed to
Speaker 1: make it. It was supposed to show we're going to try,
Speaker 1: it'll fail, and then we'll bring them back and keep
Speaker 1: the institutions basically still running. And you know, spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: In Americans state fit you find out that quite surprisingly,
Speaker 1: these people had gifts and abilities that were awakened when
Speaker 1: the right opportunity came along. But I will say that
Speaker 1: the right opportunity took some trial and error. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: it's incredible. It's an incredible story, and I think we
Speaker 1: both share the attempt to show people that they have potential,
Speaker 1: even if no one else believes in that. You've really
Speaker 1: made that point in such an eloquent way over and
Speaker 1: over again in your own story. Of course, you know, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's obviously why I resonated so much with
Speaker 1: that story. So how many years of your life that
Speaker 1: was a big chunk of your life. Yeah, it still is,
Speaker 1: by the way. The I'm still a consultant for the
Speaker 1: place that hired me. Oh wow in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still
Speaker 1: I've a consultant as long as you've been alive. Oh
Speaker 1: that's hysterical, but yeah. I Actually the proceeds for American
Speaker 1: Snake Fit have been donated to YAI, so you know,
Speaker 1: not that they're going to build a wing with the
Speaker 1: money from it, but at the very least it was.
Speaker 1: I felt it was a story that needed to be told,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't seem proper. If the proceeds you can
Speaker 1: go back to them. That makes sense, made, that's good.
Speaker 1: The trauma, loss, and uncertainty of our world have led
Speaker 1: many of us to ask life's biggest questions, such as
Speaker 1: who are we? What is our highest purpose? And how
Speaker 1: do we not only live through, but thrive in the
Speaker 1: wake of tragedy, division, and challenges to a fundamental way
Speaker 1: of living. To help us all address these questions, process
Speaker 1: what this unique time in human history has meant for
Speaker 1: us personally and collectively an emerge hole, I've collaborated with
Speaker 1: my colleague and dear friend, doctor Jordan FEININGELD, MD to
Speaker 1: bring you our forthcoming book. It's called Choose Growth, a
Speaker 1: Workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self doubt. It's a
Speaker 1: workbook design to guide you on a journey of committing
Speaker 1: to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day.
Speaker 1: It's chock full of research from humanistic psychology, positive psychology,
Speaker 1: developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology. So lots
Speaker 1: of themes that you hear about on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's aimed to help us all integrate the many facets
Speaker 1: of ourselves and co crete our new normal with a
Speaker 1: renewed sense of strength, vitality, and hope. Whether you're healing
Speaker 1: from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking
Speaker 1: ahead to life's next chapter, Choose Growth will help steer
Speaker 1: you there two deeper connection to your values, your life vision,
Speaker 1: and ultimately your most authentic self. Choose Growth will officially
Speaker 1: hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can border your
Speaker 1: copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, and all major retailers. If
Speaker 1: you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you can voter now
Speaker 1: at bookshop dot org, dot UK. We truly hope this
Speaker 1: book helps you grow and thrive and become your best self.
Speaker 1: Now back to the show. Okay, so what then drew
Speaker 1: you to the fill of positive psychology? I guess that's
Speaker 1: really fast forwarding quite a bit, or you maybe could
Speaker 1: fill in some of the missing pieces there, the missing
Speaker 1: part that and you found Martin Seligman nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: and eight nineteen ninety eight. Actually I was twenty ten
Speaker 1: when I really got old jas up about about that.
Speaker 1: But you know, actually it's a it's you know, your
Speaker 1: your question gives me pose for thought because what happened
Speaker 1: through the evolution of working with people from Billerbrook and
Speaker 1: then in that field and then really finding a way
Speaker 1: to develop develop the form of group therapy back then
Speaker 1: called interactive behavioral therapy IBT. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about about it. What does it do? Well? It was
Speaker 1: actually very very simple design. You know, as a real
Speaker 1: fan because of psychodrama of Yalam's work in group psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: so I taught group therapy at the grand level for
Speaker 1: a long time undergraduate level as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I realized is that if you're
Speaker 1: going to try to use all the research that's out there.
Speaker 1: To reach people who are different populations, you're going to
Speaker 1: need modifications. So if you look at the early studies
Speaker 1: in the late seventies early eighties on psychotherapy for people
Speaker 1: with intellectual disabilities, they all failed. But the longest study
Speaker 1: only went out eight sessions, and so you either had
Speaker 1: people proficient that group but not proficient with the population,
Speaker 1: or vice versa. You know, they really knew the population,
Speaker 1: didn't really know group. And I happened to be in
Speaker 1: that space where I knew both, but my vehicle was psychodrama.
Speaker 1: So we added role playing as a central feature into
Speaker 1: IBT because this way, if you've got six intellectually disabled
Speaker 1: people in a group, the whole first layer of group
Speaker 1: has to be about getting their attention and orientation. So
Speaker 1: I designed the group format where the first stage required
Speaker 1: the facilitator to get them together to literally physically orient
Speaker 1: and look at one another, and then build the agenda.
Speaker 1: You know, what are we going to talk about? And
Speaker 1: if it was a work group, this that and the
Speaker 1: other thing. And as that started to evolve, what became
Speaker 1: very clear is that if you added a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of movement, a little bit of role playing, your action
Speaker 1: everybody's attention went up. We did studies about, you know,
Speaker 1: attention span awareness. Recall if I put an empty chair
Speaker 1: in the middle of a group of six individuals who
Speaker 1: have intellectual disability. Now I've got their attention. I haven't
Speaker 1: said or done anything, but now you can use that
Speaker 1: empty chair in a way that keeps the core of
Speaker 1: the group focused, such as, what would you tell a
Speaker 1: new person coming into this group about the good things
Speaker 1: this group has to offer. Make believe they're sitting in
Speaker 1: the chair. Well, the activation and creates something called aac
Speaker 1: tunker brings people into that space, you know. And anyway,
Speaker 1: the longness short of it is as this developed, and
Speaker 1: there's four or five other major techniques that went with it.
Speaker 1: But at the end of it, we have what's called
Speaker 1: an affirmation stage. I didn't know I was a budding
Speaker 1: positive psychologist back then, where the facilitators were trained to
Speaker 1: go back through the whole group and recall any of
Speaker 1: his therapeutic factors and feed it back to the membership.
Speaker 1: So if somebody was crying in the group and somebody
Speaker 1: else handed them a box of tissues, that would be
Speaker 1: a spontaneous act of algruithm and say Oh, you know, Frank,
Speaker 1: it looks like you are concerned about Susie because she
Speaker 1: was crying, and it was a very kind thing of
Speaker 1: you to bring those tissues. And so we were strengthening
Speaker 1: the therapeutic factors that Yallam had and he was helpful.
Speaker 1: He was very helpful in helping me understand them and
Speaker 1: turning me on to some of the ones that were
Speaker 1: beyond what was in the book. And what evolved from
Speaker 1: there was actually kind of cool because we started to
Speaker 1: realize that everybody in the groups didn't matter. And we
Speaker 1: had at that point about two thousand groups around the
Speaker 1: world and all the social countries with socialized medicine. Everybody
Speaker 1: picked it up because it was easy to use and
Speaker 1: easy to teach, but everybody was traumatized. So again not
Speaker 1: that I had a big interest in it, I just
Speaker 1: sort of sort of an opening for it and learned
Speaker 1: about trauma with this population. You'd come to find out
Speaker 1: as a group, as I'm sure you're ready now, they're
Speaker 1: the most traumatized population there is because they lacked the
Speaker 1: cognitive skill that would keep it. And what we started
Speaker 1: to find out is that really simple things that we
Speaker 1: would all sort of get through they would be traumatized
Speaker 1: by like a sibling leaving for college, or the breakup
Speaker 1: of a romantic relationship that was short lived. You know,
Speaker 1: they would be they would have full blown PTSD symptoms
Speaker 1: for the criteria at the time. And so I actually
Speaker 1: was the lead author on the rewriting the criteria for
Speaker 1: PTSD for that group. So I'm only mentioning that because
Speaker 1: I think to be a good positive psychologist you probably
Speaker 1: have to have some experience with trauma. You know, you
Speaker 1: like that, right, it's the springboard, right, you know, I
Speaker 1: should have done this earlier. But what is psychodrama? Like
Speaker 1: I should have asked you earlierly, what is it? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a theory and a methodology. Right, So
Speaker 1: when people say psychodrama, because you hear that all the time, Oh,
Speaker 1: there was such a psychodrama. So there's a theory about it,
Speaker 1: and then there's methods about it. So as an example,
Speaker 1: it preceded and actually facilitated the development of Gustolt. Right,
Speaker 1: So Gestolt came later, but they borrowed many of the
Speaker 1: of the techniques. The idea is that there are scenes
Speaker 1: that we have in our psyche that house energy, either
Speaker 1: positive or negative. That need to be explored. Now, psychodrama
Speaker 1: went the way of most of psychology in that the
Speaker 1: scenes were used to unlock a block from negative energy.
Speaker 1: You know, it was about the amelioration of suffering, not
Speaker 1: really the facilitation of something positive. But in these these enactments,
Speaker 1: you'd go back and reenact a difficult scene or a
Speaker 1: block scene. Right. So the traditional methodology of psychodrama is
Speaker 1: that if you go back and get to that stuck
Speaker 1: energy and find ways to release it in real time
Speaker 1: through the magic of reenactment, that scene reenacted would evoke
Speaker 1: the original negative emotions. But during that time you have
Speaker 1: a chance to do a correction. So I've loved it
Speaker 1: because if you look at how the history of rational
Speaker 1: mode therapy and CBT and all these other things, they
Speaker 1: were corrective, but they were using a correction with language.
Speaker 1: This was using a somatic correction and something known as
Speaker 1: embodied cognition, just like how an actor trains for something.
Speaker 1: We'd go back to the vignette, we'd go back to
Speaker 1: the trauma, you know, play it out the way it happened,
Speaker 1: and then go back and correct it. And the beautiful
Speaker 1: part about this, going all the way back to Aristotle,
Speaker 1: was that instead of just a genuine cathsis of the
Speaker 1: negative energy being purged, psychodrama provided what's called a catharsis
Speaker 1: of integration. So once the purge emerged, ooh, I like
Speaker 1: the fact that that part. Once the purge emerged, then
Speaker 1: the information got put back together in a different way.
Speaker 1: So the trauma doesn't leave, but it gets reintegrated differently.
Speaker 1: And that to me was a fascination. And so a
Speaker 1: lot of the work I do now positive psychology and
Speaker 1: psychodrama is like the virtual gratitude visit or the benevolent self,
Speaker 1: are encounters with aspects of ourselves or the introject of
Speaker 1: somebody inside of us that activate the positive emotion that's
Speaker 1: been dormant. And in that activation of the positive is
Speaker 1: an integration that has a cathartic element to it. People
Speaker 1: are lifted by it rather than suppressed. It sounds really
Speaker 1: promising for lots of things. I mean, where is the
Speaker 1: field today, Like is it is it very popular? Not
Speaker 1: in the United States as much as you would want,
Speaker 1: But I don't work about it that much. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not in the United States. I mean, we have the organization,
Speaker 1: we have all the formal things, but the reason why
Speaker 1: here psychodramas is secondary credential, so you already have have
Speaker 1: to be something else before you can go train for this. Right,
Speaker 1: So you have psychologists or social workers or LPCs, you know,
Speaker 1: folks who have a main profession and then psychodrama. But
Speaker 1: if you go to other countries, like I do some
Speaker 1: work in Brazil, Oh, my goodness, did is really robust
Speaker 1: because it's very dynamic. I think right now what's happening
Speaker 1: is particularly because what's happened with IBT for the people
Speaker 1: with intellectual disabilities. I've added the character strengths to the
Speaker 1: therapeutic factors. So now you have individual character strengths and
Speaker 1: group therapeutic factors, so thirty eight different things that facilitators
Speaker 1: are trained to look for. And so what happens you
Speaker 1: see interactive growth and evolution with the group, but you
Speaker 1: also see, you know, the resource priming and resource activation,
Speaker 1: and this sort of percolates and comes about psychodrama. I
Speaker 1: think that the lemma, if I can call it a dilemma,
Speaker 1: it's where psychology was twenty five years ago, in the
Speaker 1: sense that we're still just trying to deal with the
Speaker 1: pain and there's only a handful of us who are
Speaker 1: trying to say, listen, we got these great tools. Why
Speaker 1: don't we activate the positive emotions so that there's more
Speaker 1: of a shift in the ratio, a shift in the
Speaker 1: balance because we have a tool that knows how to
Speaker 1: unlock them. And yeah, sure we know how to deal
Speaker 1: with the pain. But there's a whole class of vignettes
Speaker 1: and dramas just look at the Probably you would know
Speaker 1: this better than I, but I think the best possible
Speaker 1: self is one of the most effective and well researched
Speaker 1: interventions for optimism, right, and yeah, so what happens if
Speaker 1: you take the BPS and it acted just talk about it,
Speaker 1: don't just jot it down. Those are good, but those
Speaker 1: are all secondary. Why don't you take a three minute
Speaker 1: vignette and live it, speak from the future, speak from
Speaker 1: that role, become that My sense of that would be
Speaker 1: that that would be an accelerant to the positive feeling,
Speaker 1: not just you know, another rendition of it. But I
Speaker 1: think people once they embody it would really evolve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you you should write that paper? I'm working on it.
Speaker 1: I'm working on it. It's in the new book actually
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to finish up this month. But that
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I'm trying to do. What is your
Speaker 1: new book about psychodrama? Well, it's very heavily invested in
Speaker 1: action methods. Cool. It's called the Positivity Effect, and it's
Speaker 1: basically about using embodied cognition to stimulate and activate positive
Speaker 1: emotions in a in a more rapid way and in
Speaker 1: a more sustainable way. Then you might get if it's
Speaker 1: just a cognition or a written reaction. Cool. Well, I
Speaker 1: look forward to that one. Yeah, I really love your
Speaker 1: most recent book were in Hopefulness. When you got into
Speaker 1: the field of posit psychology, did you meet a gravitate
Speaker 1: towards the idea of hope? Was it something that early
Speaker 1: on gravitate towards or was that a process for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Really powerful questions, Scott, because I hit a low point,
Speaker 1: you know, and after being a trauma expert, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you find out, oh wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with PTSD. I had had an event happened
Speaker 1: that set me back and I couldn't shake it, and
Speaker 1: it bothered me because I have access to a lot
Speaker 1: of resources at that point in my life, and I thought,
Speaker 1: just if I can't shake this what are we pedal
Speaker 1: in here? What do we sell it? You know? And
Speaker 1: a friend of mine was becoming a positive psychologist at
Speaker 1: the time, and he was all about Marty Seligman and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I really was not. I was not a fan.
Speaker 1: That's changed quite a bit, but you know, I'm an
Speaker 1: experiential therapist. So the idea of cognitive therapy at cognit
Speaker 1: Behavior Therapy was like, yeah, that's okay, but you know,
Speaker 1: drama was where it's at. But he took me to
Speaker 1: the first Epic conference, and I'm proud to say I've
Speaker 1: been at everyone since, and you know, Barbara Faedwudson, Bob
Speaker 1: be Larone, you know Marty. Of course, I think even
Speaker 1: Philzombarter was there talking about the psychology of view. But
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, if even a tenth
Speaker 1: of this is true, psychology is on the on the
Speaker 1: on the threshold of something amazing, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be part of it, and so I jump jumped on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in your own way, you know, you had your own
Speaker 1: flavor to it, you brought your own unique experience background.
Speaker 1: Well you do that with everything you do, you kind
Speaker 1: of as as do you. My friend the DANM. Spin Fleeva.
Speaker 1: Tell people about this idea of learned hopefulness, like tell
Speaker 1: people about people need it right now. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are gonna this is the
Speaker 1: most important part of the interview for them personally. I mean,
Speaker 1: as much as I'm sure they love hearing about your
Speaker 1: life and your stories for them personally and helping them
Speaker 1: get through the last two and a half years, they're
Speaker 1: really this idea of warn hopefulness. They don't know it yet,
Speaker 1: so I'd love for you to tell them about your
Speaker 1: work there. So I think there were like three important
Speaker 1: parts with the first was that I felt a shift
Speaker 1: when I started studying positive psychology just by doing the
Speaker 1: ridiculous things that they were telling us to do. You know,
Speaker 1: three things that went right and why gratitude review. It
Speaker 1: seemed like, oh my god, I'm struggling with you know,
Speaker 1: all this emotional thing and you want me to think
Speaker 1: what was good today? That's not going to work. But
Speaker 1: I did it, and when I felt the change, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, there's something to this. This
Speaker 1: isn't just about bouncing back, it's bouncing forward. And when
Speaker 1: I felt the shift, that was when I got really
Speaker 1: excited about crafting, let me learn everything I can about
Speaker 1: the research and the information blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And then I was very lucky, as perhaps we both
Speaker 1: were were you know, at some point when I finished
Speaker 1: the program as a student, what he invited me to
Speaker 1: join the MAC community as his adjunct, you know, as
Speaker 1: you know, as his assistant. And so for the last
Speaker 1: ten years I've been doing that, he and James. And
Speaker 1: what that did is it put me in the middle
Speaker 1: of all the research that was coming in, which was
Speaker 1: a very I felt a very I felt so honored
Speaker 1: to be able to kind of hear it firsthand and
Speaker 1: read it firsthand, because I would have been aware of it,
Speaker 1: but marginally and not in the depth. And then somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, Marty wrote his memoir called The Hope Circuit,
Speaker 1: and you know, this was the flip from learned helplessness
Speaker 1: to hopefulness and that loop in the brain with the
Speaker 1: DOSOFE nucleus and the prefrontal cortex when they realized that
Speaker 1: it wasn't learning that made you helpless, it was an
Speaker 1: evolutionary shutdown inside the brain based on a risk assessment.
Speaker 1: That this blew my mind because the risk assessment from
Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex was what's going on? And do I
Speaker 1: have a chance to make something happen? And I remember
Speaker 1: he invited about forty of us to that lecture. I
Speaker 1: ran out of the room after he and Steve Meyer,
Speaker 1: who had written the paper that explained all this, I
Speaker 1: ran out of the room and just sketched out the book.
Speaker 1: It was like, because it changes, the paradigm, changes everything.
Speaker 1: Hope is the only positive emotion that requires negativity or
Speaker 1: uncertain to be activated. So none of the other positive
Speaker 1: emotions really need that, but hope does because if it's
Speaker 1: not activated by uncertainty of negativity, there's no need for hope.
Speaker 1: So now we have a really unique emotional experience that's
Speaker 1: transformational by design. That's the first thing. The second thing
Speaker 1: is that all the research up to that point was
Speaker 1: about helplessness learned helplessness, and I realized, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: if it's really about risk assessment, then it's about perception.
Speaker 1: What It's not what happens that matters, it's what we
Speaker 1: perceive is happening that matters. So the work now becomes
Speaker 1: how do you help people challenge their perceptions? And in essence,
Speaker 1: you know, just a declarative sentence. There's another way to
Speaker 1: look at this. So when the feces hits the oscillator,
Speaker 1: as they say, what it's like, Well, there's another way
Speaker 1: to look at this. It starts your brain thinking about well,
Speaker 1: turn the perceptions, because I mean, you know this right,
Speaker 1: George Banana's work has been about there's not a traumatic event.
Speaker 1: It's a potentially traumatic event. It's a PTE. The traumatic
Speaker 1: reaction is not in the event, it's in the reaction
Speaker 1: to the event. Okay, if you piggyback on that, if
Speaker 1: we can feel something different about what's coming at us,
Speaker 1: if we can see obstacles as challenges, if we can
Speaker 1: see this as something that I have to move toward,
Speaker 1: this conflict, not avoid or shy away from, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it marshals a whole different energetic approach to it.
Speaker 1: And then you know some really functional things like micro goals.
Speaker 1: You know, micro goals are I've done a lot of
Speaker 1: these presentations since the Learned Hopefulness came out, and the
Speaker 1: biggest takeaway people have are breaking their day up into
Speaker 1: micro goals. What can you get done in the next
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, Because it's the recalibration of your goal to
Speaker 1: something achievable that activates the hope. So when people say, listen,
Speaker 1: I got twenty minutes, they're going to answer these three emails.
Speaker 1: Now you got something bi directional. I feel a little
Speaker 1: bit of energy, But then I get that goal done.
Speaker 1: That gold finishing up now feeds me with a little
Speaker 1: more energy to get the next twenty minutes done and
Speaker 1: the next. So my day is filled with dozens of
Speaker 1: twenty minute blocks of get something done. You know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you really practice what you preach? Then oh? Absolutely, absolutely. Wow.
Speaker 1: You know there are a lot of really neat exercises
Speaker 1: in your book, And can you give a couple more
Speaker 1: for people? Sure? Sure, I think there's a couple that
Speaker 1: I really enjoy. I have people imagine a lemon, and
Speaker 1: imagine cutting that lemon in half and smelling lemon, and
Speaker 1: then picking half of that lemon up and then biting
Speaker 1: into it. And if I took a while to set
Speaker 1: that whole thing up, everybody produces saliva and there's all
Speaker 1: done with imagination. And then if I were right behind that,
Speaker 1: ask you to imagine somebody you love and who loves you,
Speaker 1: and do you feel something in your body. And if
Speaker 1: you do where and what do you feel? People will
Speaker 1: point to their heart and they'll say they feel warmth. Now,
Speaker 1: neither the lemon nor the lover, as my students have
Speaker 1: pointed out, are there, right. But through your direction of
Speaker 1: your thought, the imagination of one or the other, you
Speaker 1: change your biochemistry. And so it's just that would be
Speaker 1: the first thing I would say is to be to
Speaker 1: recognize that your thoughts will go in the direction that
Speaker 1: you send them. So if you send them on the
Speaker 1: lemon thing, the rumination thing, the intrusive rumination thing, that's
Speaker 1: what you're going to get. But if you have deliberate rumination,
Speaker 1: which is the correction to think about people you love,
Speaker 1: to think about something positive, what'll start to happen is
Speaker 1: it'll change your positive You know, your positivity. So if
Speaker 1: you're in a dark space and you feel the intrusive rumination,
Speaker 1: imagining somebody you love is one of the quickest ways
Speaker 1: to break the downward cycle. At the very least, it'll
Speaker 1: neutralize it, and on the other side it'll start an
Speaker 1: upward spiral. The other one that I would say, in
Speaker 1: addition to the micro goals and using the love, is
Speaker 1: to practice kindness now that sounds a little California. But
Speaker 1: to practice kindness like to look for ways to be kind.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you I thought this was nothing
Speaker 1: but bull when I first read about it and heard
Speaker 1: about it. But picking one day a week to do
Speaker 1: five acts of kindness, so like you know, like my
Speaker 1: day is Thursday, right, every Thursday I go out, I
Speaker 1: look for five acts of kindness, either that I witness
Speaker 1: or that I take part in or acknowledge it. Right,
Speaker 1: So like today, Scott, if you drop a book, I
Speaker 1: can't help you. I mean come back on my Thursday.
Speaker 1: You gotta be at that, I said, Jeez, Scott, Pinja
Speaker 1: dropped this out. It doesn't mean you can't be kind
Speaker 1: the other days. But those five acts of kindness, recognizing
Speaker 1: that there is by activating a love you can truncate
Speaker 1: a downward spiral and reverse it, and using the micro
Speaker 1: goals are really three very They're simple, very simple. Right,
Speaker 1: None of these things are rocket science, but they make
Speaker 1: changes because it changes your perception about the world we're in.
Speaker 1: If you think I can't wait to do something kind today,
Speaker 1: today's my dad, I'm going to do something kind. Boom.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about a person who loves me rather than
Speaker 1: the next damn thing that's going to come along. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: and I've got twenty minutes to make something happen. Let
Speaker 1: me pick a goal, get it done, and feel good
Speaker 1: about myself. Oh wow, these are great, great tips for
Speaker 1: people in your more recent incarnation stage of life. You're
Speaker 1: at Columbia Teachers College and you are part of a
Speaker 1: spirituality program there, spiritual psychology, and I'd like you to
Speaker 1: talk a little about that program and how you you know,
Speaker 1: can you explain to people how hope and spirituality work together?
Speaker 1: What a great, great point. I was teaching as an
Speaker 1: adjunct there for five or six years. I designed and
Speaker 1: was teaching the positive Psychology course, and they were looking
Speaker 1: for an academic director. And I certainly was not a
Speaker 1: person that would have applied for that. That's not that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been something I would have aspired to or
Speaker 1: thought I could could manage. But doctor Lisa Miller, who
Speaker 1: runs that program, apparently they were having trouble finding somebody
Speaker 1: that the whole team and group could agree on, and
Speaker 1: she just called me up one day and said, listen,
Speaker 1: I put your name into the into the running here.
Speaker 1: And people said, if you'll take it that they would
Speaker 1: agree to it, and I was like, really, I guess
Speaker 1: I hadn't aggravated enough folks yet everyone loved. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well we'll see what happens downstream. But at least they didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, they were ready to throw me out, and
Speaker 1: so I very you know, I really had to think
Speaker 1: about it because it's a massive change. You know, I
Speaker 1: have had big practice I was teaching. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like just but man, I said, She's this is an
Speaker 1: opportunity to put all this stuff into play with the
Speaker 1: next generation. You know, we get and this program is
Speaker 1: the first of its kind. You know, it's spirituality, Mind body,
Speaker 1: and we have a whole institute, a spirit Mind Body Institute,
Speaker 1: where we have everything from ecology and working on the
Speaker 1: planet to very deep research. You know doctor Miller's work
Speaker 1: and her most recent book on the Awakened Brain is
Speaker 1: showing all the neural psych correlates of spirituality. And we
Speaker 1: have just a phenomenal faculty who are we have three
Speaker 1: main domains, so we have Schools with spirit where we
Speaker 1: bring a spiritual curriculum back into the public schools, private schools,
Speaker 1: and we have a faculty that are superb at helping
Speaker 1: teachers sort of fold in this idea of purpose, meaning
Speaker 1: and spirituality into the career, kill them, you know, reading
Speaker 1: stories and developing curriculum that awaken children. And then we
Speaker 1: have spiritual entrepreneurship. So you know, we've even invaded the
Speaker 1: business world. And quite honestly, our stats for graduates starting
Speaker 1: and maintaining businesses is higher than right now. It's higher
Speaker 1: than the Columbia Business School, Wharton or Harvard's because there's
Speaker 1: literally spirit behind it. Now we have a small group,
Speaker 1: we're not an MBA, but when they start their business,
Speaker 1: it's got sold to it. There's something about it doing
Speaker 1: the right thing for the right reason in the right way.
Speaker 1: And then we have a wellness track, so if people
Speaker 1: want to learn how to design webinars or do workshops
Speaker 1: like your beautiful course that I've recommended to so many people.
Speaker 1: You know, you've put that together, you put it on
Speaker 1: the book and the work and the research, and how
Speaker 1: do you enact that. Well a lot of people have
Speaker 1: those ideas, but they don't know how to bring them forward.
Speaker 1: So we have a whole program than that. And you know,
Speaker 1: and then of course we have equine therapy, we have
Speaker 1: animal human bond, and then we have all the classic
Speaker 1: stuff like on Youngian psychology as well the history. And
Speaker 1: then of course I teach the positive psychology and the
Speaker 1: first course offered at a university on the healing power
Speaker 1: of hope, so we use all the new research there.
Speaker 1: Tell us more about that. Well, that was very exciting
Speaker 1: after the book came out. Actually, doctor Miller again, she's
Speaker 1: a I just have to take a moment to say,
Speaker 1: between her and Marty, I feel just very blessed and
Speaker 1: lucky to have that kind of support in my life.
Speaker 1: She was like, you know me and you, yeah, out
Speaker 1: your support system. I thought it was implied, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I said, that's right. I have three major
Speaker 1: sources of support here and the biggest fans. Isn't that true?
Speaker 1: You know? You know, And just to take a minute, Scott,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people didn't live who are
Speaker 1: probably listening to this broadcast, didn't live through the sixties
Speaker 1: and the revolution of humanism and humanistic psychology, and man,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, when you and I started
Speaker 1: to know one another a bit more and I could
Speaker 1: see what you were doing, it was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is this is what we needed back then this
Speaker 1: is what you know. There was a lot of good
Speaker 1: the sixties that we had a shelf for a while
Speaker 1: to bring back. But I think that as an inspiration,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, man, Scott's Scott's doing what. I hope
Speaker 1: to be able to bring it into the world, something
Speaker 1: that is valid and updated, and take some of the
Speaker 1: ideas that really never got a chance to fully flourish
Speaker 1: and bring them back and make them sing, Oh, you're
Speaker 1: doing it, You're doing it. I mean, the intersection between
Speaker 1: hope and spirituality and putting that on a firm psychological
Speaker 1: and scientific foundation is a really special niche. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: there anything you want to say about that connection that
Speaker 1: you're saying about right now? Yeah? You know, the first
Speaker 1: thing is hope, optimism and faith. Right, People interchange those
Speaker 1: terms all the time, but the truth is from a
Speaker 1: more scientific perspective is when we talk about hope, it's
Speaker 1: what it is that you believe you can do to
Speaker 1: change the future. It's very personal. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a call to action. It's something that you believe
Speaker 1: you can do. Whereas optimism, as I'm sure you know,
Speaker 1: is generic. You know, I feel something good is going
Speaker 1: to happen, you know. And as Angela Duckworth says, you know,
Speaker 1: I think tomorrow is going to be good, is better
Speaker 1: than I'm going to do something to make tomorrow good.
Speaker 1: First one is optimism and second one is hope, you know.
Speaker 1: But faith is when something greater than you is going
Speaker 1: to take care of the future. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: that you believe something good is going to happen, or
Speaker 1: you are going to make something happen. It's that something
Speaker 1: else is going to take care of that right now.
Speaker 1: The best description I ever heard of that came from
Speaker 1: Catfish Hunter, who was a pitcher, and when he was
Speaker 1: inducted into the Hall of Fame, they had interviews with
Speaker 1: him where he talked about how much he trained and
Speaker 1: trained in all the different weathers to keep his arm
Speaker 1: in good shape, and this and that and the other thing.
Speaker 1: And what he said is I worked really hard, really hard,
Speaker 1: so that I had as much control over that ball
Speaker 1: as I could, but at some point I had to
Speaker 1: let it go. And I thought, hmmm, that's it. And
Speaker 1: isn't that the intersection with hope? We do everything we
Speaker 1: can to align ourselves with God's grace, with the universe,
Speaker 1: with whatever the source is, so we do war part
Speaker 1: and then the universe does its part. Oh well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should end there, but let me let me just
Speaker 1: do a quick wrap up here, because your your life
Speaker 1: is You've done so many seemingly disparate things, but they
Speaker 1: all seem very connected to me. When I read your
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen paper positive Group Psychotherapy Modified for Adults with
Speaker 1: Intellectual disabilities, up to reading your work on positive Interactive
Speaker 1: Behavioral Therapy, reading your work on word hopefulness, reading your
Speaker 1: work about you did deinstitutionalizing certain places. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: there's there's common What would you describe the common theme?
Speaker 1: Because it seems obvious to me, But what do you
Speaker 1: see it as? I think? Hope, there it is. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for good night. Can I add something yeah? Yeah, please, Yes,
Speaker 1: I also see the common theme as human potential. Mmm.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the truth? Yeah, that's where we really bond.
Speaker 1: That's really yeah, real bond. Dan. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being such a bright light in this world and
Speaker 1: for coming to my podcast. Finally we got we got
Speaker 1: the great Dan Thomas. You are awesome, Scott, and for
Speaker 1: your work and podcast man bringing this out into the world.
Speaker 1: Just awesome to watch. Awesome. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also
Speaker 1: put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
Speaker 1: page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.