psychology – Scott D.Miller

Psychotherapy Training: Is it Worth the Bother?

Big bucks. That’s what training in psychotherapy costs. Take graduate school in psychology as an example. According to the US Department of Education’s National Center (NCES), a typical doctoral program takes five years to complete and costs between US$ 240,000-300,000.00. Who has that kind of money laying around after completing four years of college? The… — read more
Why is this man laughing?

May 4th, 2011 Copenhagen, Denmark Just finished my first day of a two week trip covering spots in Denmark and Holland. Yesterday, I traveled to Copenhagen from Hilo, Hawaii where I was presenting for the Hawaiian Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. Dr. Gay Barflied (pictured on the far left above) spent years lobbying to… — read more
Hope Transcends: Learning from our Clients

"Hope Transcends" was the theme of the 39th Annual Summer Institute on Substance Abuse and Mental Health held in Newark, Delaware this last week. I had the honor of working with 60+ clinicians, agency managers, peer supports, and consumers of mental health services presenting a two-day, intensive training on "feedback-informed clinical work." I met so… — read more
The Impact of Mentors

Brendan Madden Scott D. Miller Jeffrey K. Zeig A little over month ago, I blogged about how the outcome and session rating scales were originally conceived of and developed. A few days prior to that, I wrote about where the whole idea of using measures to solicit feedback had started. In both instances, my teachers and supervisors played a… — read more
Deliberate Practice, Expertise, & Excellence

Later today, I board United flight 908 on my way to workshops scheduled in Holland and Belgium. My routine in the days leading up to an international trip is always the same. I slowly gather together the items I’ll need while away: computer (check); european electric adapter (check); presentation materials (check); clothes (check). And, oh yeah, two decks of playing cards… — read more
Magical Moments in Kansas

Registrations are already coming in for the first International Conference on "Achieving Clinical Excellence." Earlier on this blog, I announced that internationally known researcher K. Anders Erickson, Ph.D.–the "expert on experts"–had agreed to present at the event. At that time, I also indicated that a number of internationally accomplished performers from a variety of professions (including psychology, business, medicine,… — read more
Common versus Specific Factors and the Future of Psychotherapy: A Response to Siev and Chambless

Early last summer, I received an email from my long time friend and colleague Don Meichenbaum alerting me to an article published in the April 2009 edition of the Behavior Therapist–the official "newsletter" of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies–critical of the work that I and others have done on the common factors. Briefly, the article,… — read more
How NOT to Achieve Clinical Excellence: The Sorry State of Continuing Professional Education

Greg Neimeyer, Ph.D., is causing quite a stir in continuing education circles. What has he done? In several scholarly publications, he’s reviewed the existing empirical literature and found that continuing professional education in heavioral health is not particularly, well, …educational. Indeed, in a soon-to-be published piece in the APA journal, Professional Psychology, he notes, "While the majority of studies… — read more
Superior Performance as a Psychotherapist: First Steps

So what is the first step to improving your performance? Simply put, knowing your baseline. Whatever the endeavor, you have to keep score. All great performers do. As a result, the performance in most fields has been improving steadily over the last 100 years. Consider, for instance, the Olympics. Over the last century, the best… — read more