World Domination Through Peace, Love, and Understanding

One Life Education & Training

General Readings for Workshop Participants

I may suggest very specific readings for workshops, but here are some general suggestions:
 

If you could only read one short thing that got you ready for a workshop with me, I would say that the Values Work in ACT chapter from the Mindfulness and Acceptance book would be it.  I have another chapter focused on therapeutic relationship that connects to some work I have been doing over the past year or two: Mindfulness, Values and Therapeutic Relationship in ACT.

I am also attaching a copy of a substance abuse chapter I wrote with Michelle Byrd. You may not be interested in substance abuse, but there is a good flavor of my work in it. It was published in the ACT Practical Guide.

We typically use the Valued Living Questionnaire at workshops. Feel free to download the VLQ and a rough Working Guide to the VLQ.

The original Acceptance and Commitment Therapy book is still the most comprehensive and general treatment of the work. If you read Spanish, my book with Carmen Luciano,  Terapia de Aceptación y Compromiso: Un Tratamiento Conductual Orientado a los Valores, provides another view into the work. Click here to find this book at a North American seller or a European seller. Finally, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain, though aimed primarily at chronic pain and stress, contains a good deal of material relevant to general clinical issues and can be purchased directly from Context Press.

Of course, there are many more including Georg Eifert and John Forsyth's new ACT for Anxiety Disorders  and the ACT Practical Guide that connect nicely with the aspects of the ACT work are likely to show up in my trainings.

Here are some odd readings that can help you get a sense of my own central interests in ACT. They are not obviously connected to the behavioral tradition, though they are what brought me to it.

Two of Albert Camus' delightful essays from his slim volume entitled "the Myth of Sisyphus."  You may have this on the bookshelf. It is very available in paperback form. Any really decent used book store would have a copy.

In case you don't have the book, I am attaching the essay "the myth of Sisyphus" as a pdf file. I am attaching a copy of the essay "An Absurd Reasoning" as a word document. Both of these are O'Brien's translation (can't read French....sigh). I have highlighted a spot in the latter essay which I find particularly fascinating--and which I often mention in workshops. I am also attaching a couple poems that I love. One, called "Actaeon." by John Erskine--wonderful stuff in my opinion, and touches upon some of my central concerns in ACT.  Another passed to me by Sona Dimidjian recently (a new friend) is called Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye. I believe Jon Kabat-Zinn uses this one in his workshops. It will suit our purposes too.  And one last one--just a piece out of T. S. Elliot's Burnt Norton......ahhhh divine hesitation.

(I am having the thought that this is some weird behaviorism.)

I would also recommend a re-read of the first section (the story, not the theory) of Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning." In this, I think that the section where Frankl struggles with a decision to escape the death camp (p. 67-68), but decides to stay and care for his patients is particularly relevant to the workshop.
 

(More weird behaviorism.)

There are sensibilities in here that seem terribly important to me.  In my workshops, the issues at stake will be cast in behavior analytic terms. A background in behavior analysis will help, but I believe that the workshops are also be understandable with little behavior analysis background.

Many of my own publications are available for download from my academic homepage. Just scroll down the page and you will find them. More can be had by emailing and asking.

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Last modified: 04/24/08