Chantry, D. (2007). Talking ACT: Notes and Conversations on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Reno, NV: Context Press.
Taken from the introduction...
This book contains a selection of e-mails to the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) listserv between July 2002 and August 2005. This period saw significant growth and development in the worldwide ACT community, with membership of the listserv increasing to around 700 members (now, in 2007 membership is topping 1,200).
This e-mail collection started life as a personal archive. Realizing that the listserv was an invaluable source of guidance on ACT, I began to keep what seemed to be the most useful material as a resource, purely for personal use. No formal selection criteria were adopted; however, given the non-availability of specialist ACT supervision in my home area, I looked in particular for posts that would support my own formative clinical practice. To this end the archive incorporated e-mails concerning the main principles of ACT, its application to particular presenting problems, ACT resources (for example, new metaphors and exercises), and clinical issues. Also included were posts describing the theoretical, scientific and philosophical roots of ACT, discussing new research findings, and comparing and contrasting ACT with other therapeutic approaches. This culling of material from the ACT listserv was not simply a work-related enterprise, however. In common with many other list members, I came to recognise the relevance and application of the ACT work in my own life, and my interest in discussions on the listserv became personal as well as professional.
As the collection grew, I was persuaded that it might be of value to others. With so many useful messages being sent to the listserv on a daily basis, bringing them into a publishable form seemed a worthwhile project. The major editorial problem, however, lay in deciding what to omit, given that space limitations allowed only a fraction of the 4400 or so e-mails during this period to be included. This inevitably meant leaving out very many interesting and thoughtful contributions. Posts containing substantial material from already-published sources (for example, ACT-relevant poems or long quotations) were also excluded in the final edit for copyright reasons.
One consequence of presenting a limited selection is that the book may not fully convey the collegiate, supportive nature of the ACT listserv community, where contributions, whether from novice or expert in ACT, are respectfully received and where the absence of hierarchy is a defining feature. ACT is a model of therapy, and it is also an approach that encourages people to work together for the common good. It is hoped that the humanity and goodwill of the ACT community will be sensed in these pages.
Readers may also sense the dynamic and informal nature of these e-mail communications. These are not comments meant for scholarly publication – they are loose, moment by moment conversations. In order to avoid risk of unfairness or harm to contributors, it is hoped that any reader wishing to quote from posts published here will be mindful of the context in which they were written, and that checks with the original authors will be made where appropriate.
A note on the composition of the book: each chapter contains a brief introduction to its subject-matter and an index. As many e-mails do not fit neatly into single-subject categories, readers will find plenty of overlap in the organization of the material, particularly as “threads” of e-mails (often containing a variety of topics) have, as far as possible, been kept together. The chapter indices show, in italics, entries for relevant e-mails found in other chapters. Each post or thread may be located via one or more index entries; however, the range of topics sometimes addressed in a single e-mail or thread has necessitated an indexing system that might be described as indicative rather than comprehensive.
Contents:
Chapter 1: ACT: Basic and Applied
Chapter 2: Comparing ACT with other Therapies and Traditions
Chapter 3: Core Processes in ACT
Chapter 4: ACT Foundations: RFT, Contextualism, and Behavior Analysis
Chapter 5: ACT with Particular Client Groups and Clinical Problems Chapter 6: Clinical Issues and Barriers in ACT
Chapter 7: ACT: The Therapeutic Process and Clinical Resources Index