Section for the Promotion of Psychotherapy Science Section – February 2017

2017 APA Roundtable and 2016 Roundtable Recap

Greetings from the Section for the Promotion of Psychotherapy Science! We are excited to announce that our 2017 Roundtable discussion at the American Psychological Association convention in Washington D.C. will have as its theme, “Social Justice in Psychotherapy Science: From Individual to Social Change.” Our section chair, Margit Berman, from the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, will chair the roundtable, and a variety of psychotherapy researchers and practitioners engaged in social justice will be engaging in the discussion, including Wonjin Sim, Jesse Owen, Candice Crowell, MaryAnn Covey, and Melanie Lantz, among others.

Last year’s roundtable discussion for our section, “Promotion of Multicultural Psychotherapy Science: What do we have to learn? What do we have to offer?”  was an exciting exchange of ideas among early, mid-career, and prominent counselor-researchers, and we are working on extending the themes we identified in this discussion (as well as those we hope to expand upon this year) into a series of articles related to social justice practice in psychotherapy. Our 2015 roundtable, “Sharing Wisdom – Doing Therapy While Doing Research on Therapy,” was expanded into a special issue on careers in psychotherapy research and practice, which was edited by past-section-chair, Jill Paquin and which is currently in press at Counseling Psychology Quarterly.

We hope you’ll join us for this year’s roundtable discussion, which promises to be equally rich and exciting as in previous years, as well as keeping an eye out for the special issue of CPQ.

Student Award Seeking Nominations


2016 Student award winner, Hui Xu and the Section Chair.



We will also present our Student Award as well as our Lifetime Achievement Award to a prominent psychotherapy scientist at this year’s roundtable. Therefore, we are also pleased to announce our annual student award competition. Nominations will be accepted until May 1, 2017 for an undergraduate or graduate student who has first-authored a completed research project on some aspect of psychotherapy science. The research must have been completed, published, or presented at a conference no earlier than January 1, 2016. (Graduated students, i.e., those who have already earned the Ph.D., are also eligible provided they were students when the research was completed, published, or presented.) Award nominations should include (a) a letter discussing the merits of the project from a counseling psychologist who has served as the student’s advisor (on the project and/or on the student’s degree), and (b) a 500-1000 word abstract of the completed study OR a copy of the published manuscript or conference paper OR a copy of a manuscript submitted to a conference or journal for review. (Please DO NOT send dissertations.) The award includes a $250 prize to help defray costs of travel to the APA convention. Submit nominations via email only (no snail mail nominations) to [email protected].

Call for Members and New Section Service Award Winners


2016 lifetime achievement award winner, Changming Duan and Section Chair.


Finally, if you are a student or psychologist interested in how therapy works, we encourage you to join our section. Section members are eligible to apply for our new Section Service Award, awarded for the first time in 2016 to Wonjin Sim of Chatham University and Norah Chapman of Spalding University. This annual award is designed to recognized membership and service to the section, and only Section for the Promotion of Psychotherapy Science members are eligible, so join now! There are no dues required, and (besides award eligibility) member benefits include access to our website, listserv, and connection with a community of students and professionals dedicated to enhancing our understanding of what works in the practice of psychotherapy. See our website (https://scp.wpengine.com/sections/promotion-of-psychotherapy-science/) or contact me via email to become a member and be added to our listserv.

Margit I. Berman Ph.D.
Section Chair
Minnesota School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University

Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Email: [email protected]

Tags: , , Posted on: February 8th, 2017