An Interview with Dr. Dan Tomasulo: Dare to Be Happy...& Hopeful

Being in the presence of “Dr. Dan” Tomasulo evokes words like “inspiring” and “amazing!” My top words knowing him are “wicked smart, funny, caring/kind, lovable,” and similarly, “amazing” and “inspiring.”

I first met “Dr. Dan” in 1984. He was teaching psychology at Brookdale Community College, NJ. I was an adjunct, instructing Fitness Science and Fitness Through Dance. As an undergraduate in psychology, I had studied abnormal psychology, but not developmental. I was newly pregnant and curious about Human Growth and Development with a new baby coming soon.

“Dr. Dan” had a great reputation as a top instructor. Dan’s knowledge, upbeat energy, and approach, made his course a delight. His thoughtful assignments gave me insight, and meaningful resources for approaching parenthood.

Dan and I reconnected in 2007, when he guest taught for Joel Morgovsky, his best friend. Joel led the first Positive Psychology class at Brookdale and I was a student in his class. It was serendipitous seeing Dan. I earned my MAPP degree in 2008, and later wrote a recommendation for Dan, a great man, scholar and innovator, who needed no introduction. With an impressive background encompassing more than 35 years of successful and award-winning clinical, academic, and literary experience, dedication, and enthusiasm, it is my honor to share this interview with my dear friend, Dr. Dan Tomasulo.

Elaine: What are 3-5 things you’d like people to know about you?

Dan: First, I’d like to thank you for inviting me to be featured in the MAPP magazine. Such a deep honor to be asked! I couldn’t imagine talking to a more wonderful friend about what has been going on. Your path and journey have been an inspiration to witness and share parts of along the way—and I’m happy to share a bit of mine with you—so here goes!

• I’d like people to know that I’m taller than I appear in person— and that my top character strength is humor. They should also know I’m from Jersey. You got a problem with that?

• Secondly, my new book Learned Hopefulness will be out in spring 2020. It offers a host of new evidence-informed experiential interventions to help people deal with depression. It will introduce the Hierarchy of Hope. I’ll chat more about this later on.

• I’ve been working in China helping to develop the use of artificial intelligence in the delivery of well-being interventions, which has been exciting and challenging. There is a lot to learn and much promise.

• My clinical research and work began in the field of concomitant intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. Since my memoir (American Snake Pit) came out last year about the early work on transitioning people out of Willowbrook, arguably the worst asylum in US history, I’ve been invited to bring the principles of positive psychology and positive psychotherapy to the people who may need it most. I consult with the University of New Hampshire’s START program delivering clinical and support services to programs serving these people nationally, and we’ve been using MARTY’s PERMA model. We are currently designing a large-scale research project to show the effectiveness of using these principles.

Elaine: Dan, this is GREAT! You are funny, brilliant, inspiring. I know you have been working as Marty Seligman’s Assistant Instructor since 2012. What’s your ideal vision around the art and science of Positive Psychology? What are you most excited about? What have you learned that means the most to you?

Dan: Marty’s visionary approach and the development of the MAPP program has revolutionized psychology as it is conceived and delivered. I feel extremely fortunate to live through the transformation of the science and now to have become part of it. I was in my PhD program back in the day when Learned Helplessness came out and became a game changer. It is extraordinary to me that nearly fifty years since his original research, the Hope Circuit reveals how his work with Steve Maier has revolutionized the field again by showing the original paradigm for learned helplessness was wrong. To be witness to this extraordinary journey of Marty’s is why I’m likely the world’s oldest teaching assistant.

Elaine: What were the biggest surprises of your MAPP education?

Dan: The ‘magic of MAPP’ phenomenon. I thought this would be a type of retraining for psychologists — only to find out I was the first experiential therapist and licensed psychologist trained in psychodrama that Marty let into the program. I was never expecting the rich and deep friendships and collegiality to develop with my classmates and other MAPPsterS. I was amazed that when I put together the New York Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology I was able to bring in and work with so many friends and top people in the field (like Barb Fredrickson, Bob Vallerand and Ryan Niemiec). There was no way before MAPP I’d be able to have these connections or deep friendships. The list of MAPPsters I feel I can call on and also be called on to help is such a deep and wonderful resource of well-being. Watching my fellow MAPPsters excel and grow and change the world is a primary source of ongoing inspiration.

Elaine: I completely agree about the “Magic of MAPP.” Dan, in 2017, at the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) World Congress, Montreal, you won the “Avant-garde Clinical Psychology award for the fusion of Psychodrama and Applied Positive Psychology.” Can you briefly describe the process of creating interventions/designs using Role Play/Enactment so people can “feel” Positive Emotions and Empowerment in the moment? Why does that matter?

Dan: Many of the interventions in positive psychology involve reading and writing and have evolved from research built on using these modalities. The results are good, but it leaves the more experiential methods untested and therefore unused. Much of my work now at Columbia and in various consulting roles has been the development of more experiential interventions than the ones we’ve all studied. Many of these involve direct experiences that move beyond the use of words and writing to activate positivity.

Words and language are not primary affect activators nor efficient transducers for emotion. As children we are alive for years four to five or six before we have words to describe our feelings. No four-year-old would say to his parents, ‘I’m feeling a bit morose today.’

Experiential methods are designed to work with emotions at their core. My post-doctoral training was almost 13 years in psychodrama where we learn about these transformations as the result of embodied cognition. We study how our body influences our mind through its positioning and stance in the playing of various roles. Try thinking negative thoughts while you are smiling — or imagine a peak experience as you exaggerate a frown and you’ll have some idea of how your body influences — and perhaps determines thoughts and feelings.

When you combine role theory, embodied cognition, psychodrama, and positive psychology, the world opens in new ways. Many academically trained psychologists and clinicians aren’t exposed to these methods and as a result don’t research or employ practices with them.

The Avant-garde Clinical Psychology award was for my development of the virtual gratitude visit (VGV). The VGV uses a protagonist who delivers a statement of gratitude to an empty chair. Imagined in the chair is someone from their life-past or present-that they want to give gratitude to. Of course, this is an extension and elaboration of Marty’s original gratitude visit. The difference is this can include people who have passed on or are not locatable. This opens up a whole world to the protagonist. It also does not require the protagonist be able to read and write. It was one of the first positive psychology interventions to be used with people with intellectual disabilities. The VIA institute has some articles about this on their site, and Ryan Niemiec and I along with some other colleagues have published together on using the VGV as part of a strength-based approach in psychotherapy.

The key feature in this exercise is role reversal. After the protagonist expresses their gratitude to the empty chair, they can reverse roles and become the very person they’ve been expressing it to.

We normally think about catharsis as a purging of emotions — but when Aristotle wrote about this, he was writing about negative emotions. He also spoke of a catharsis of integration. Moreno (the founder of

psychodrama, group therapy and social network theory) saw the catharsis of integration as the dynamic behind psychodrama as it incorporated an understanding of the emotion being expressed.

In positive emotions (like gratitude), you don’t want to purge them; you want to integrate them. Through the role reversal you not only get the receiving of the gratitude, you more fully integrate the emotion into your psyche and experience.

My MAPP classmate and dear friend Dan Lerner and his teaching partner, Alan Schlechter, have invited me to do a demonstration of this each semester in their NYU Science of Happiness class for the past 7 years. Every demonstration to nearly 500 students involves the entire class witnessing a deep transformational emotional integration by the protagonist. This is the benefit of role-playing. You can use it in a large-scale environment, and the whole audience is elevated by mirroring what the protagonist feels. One person does the work, 500 get the benefit.

At IPPA World Congress, Montreal, I was asked to lead a 10-minute demonstration during the award ceremony. I was lucky enough to have Tal Ben Shahar’s deeply moving VGV to show. It is here for you if you’d like to see it. http://bit.ly/TalVGV

Elaine: What about the role self-compassion in leading people toward healing and thriving?

Dan: Such lovely timing for this question! Self-compassion is central to almost every type of therapeutic gain. I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of its power and the work out at Stanford University, and Dr. Kristin Neff’s wonderful work hasn’t incorporated what is the needed role reversal for integration. Adding an encounter with the benevolent part of yourself through the use of an empty chair embraces the undeveloped aspects of our capacity for self-compassion. I don’t think it has been used because most academics are not experientially trained clinicians, and as a result may not know about such things as a role reversal for integration.

As it turns out I’ve just received an email from Dr. Tayyab Rashid (head of the clinical division for IPPA) that I’ll be receiving their award for the division’s case study challenge in Australia on July 19th. It is using embodied cognition through role reversal in developing self-compassion as a component of treating unforgiveness. I’ll be doing a brief demonstration of this in Australia, along with a workshop on the VGV.

Elaine: Congratulations, Dan! I’ve heard you use the words “taking an open dive” and “applying energy to get to the treasure.” Can you tell us what you mean?

Dan: Therapy and coaching use a time-limited format, when compared to parenting and other major relationship building, and this time limit necessarily changes the choices you use and the manner in which you use them.

When time is limited you want to be sure there is enough time to recover and process the use of an experiential technique to allow for adequate integration. I’ve made the analogy to an open dive in scuba diving. If you only have 1 hour of oxygen, you want to get to the treasure in time to explore it and carry some of the nuggets back to the surface. I always encourage facilitators to leave enough time after any experiential method, in fact any positive intervention, for integrating the experience. It’s just like diving: If you don’t leave enough time to come back to the surface, you can feel woozy. While this is true one-on- one, it is particularly true when leading large groups with experiential methods and positive interventions.

Elaine: What a great analogy! Can you discuss your favorite experiences designing and teaching the Columbia University Clinical course in Positive Psychology?

Dan: This is the first fully approved positive psychology graduate course in the Columbia curriculum. It is very exciting because the students come in having had multiple other courses in their clinical program, which usually focus on pathology. They view the positive psychology course initially with a bit of skepticism, but then are excited by it. As they embrace the research and transformational exercises, they find that this is a very robust discipline. I have designed nearly two dozen experiential elements for the course, and the students are engaged in personal transformation during the semester. Most report genuine excitement about incorporating these techniques and interventions into their clinical work. It is a joy to watch students move through the course. Honestly, I learn much more from them than they do from me.

Elaine: You are also a core faculty member of Columbia University’s “Spirituality, Mind, Body (SMB) Institute” with Dr. Lisa Miller, teaching courses on Optimal Well-Being. What’s new on the horizon in advancing Positive Higher Education and Flourishing?

Dan: The SMB program at Columbia has been a natural extension of positive psychology as it includes spiritual growth and development with a heavy emphasis on experiential learning. I think that is one reason my work has fit in their curriculum. Marty was responsible for getting me connected with them, and I will be eternally grateful. I think these more applied style courses for personal growth need to be housed in the right programs. I feel extremely lucky that I found a home with the clinical psych program and Dr. Miller’s original SMB program, and I’m working with other venues now to grow these style courses in the community. The New York Certificate course and my work at Kripalu were some of the first efforts, which are being expanded.

I’m in the process of developing a positive psychotherapy course, which will look at the diligent work Marty and Tayyab have brought to the psychotherapy field. This will be a continuing education course for professionals, and will include opportunities to take evidence-informed interventions to needy populations.

Elaine: You have had a long, sterling, multi-award-winning career, including authoring “Healing Trauma: The Power of Group Treatment for People with Intellectual Disabilities,” the American Psychological Association’s first text on psychotherapy for people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. In that book, you describe a combination of psychodrama and affirmations to help build a greater understanding. Who were early (and later) influences in your trajectory? How and why?

Dan: My primary trainers in psychodrama were Bob and Jacquie Siroka, who are now dear friends. They took over the institute when Moreno passed, and gave me the clinical background I needed for transition. John Darley, the social psychologist at Princeton, was my mentor during my fellowship year there who helped me expand my understanding of role theory and apply its use with people with intellectual disabilities, and Jerome Singer at Yale encouraged me to publish and then target the work on psychodrama as a specialty. He was the one that helped me shift to a more applied approach with these methods.

The form of therapy discussed in that book is called Positive-Interactive Behavioral Therapy, P-IBT and has become the most widely used form of group therapy for people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. The model was developed over 30 years ago and after MAPP was updated to include strength spotting.

Elaine: How great is that! Dan, can you talk about your early days in stand up? Did you find a relationship between comedy and uplifting mental health? How, if so, did your first book, “Confessions of a Former Child, a Therapist’s Memoir,” tie into your strength of humor?

Dan: I was on the comedy circuit for a couple of years working mostly out of the Improv in New York City. The best part of this is working with comics like Andy Kaufman and Bill Maher as they were coming on the scene. Such a wonderful time and it help craft some sense of presentation, engagement, and spontaneity. One night I had a drink with Andy Kaufman where he explained how he developed his character “foreign man.” It is quite a story I hope to write about someday .

I also got introduced to Psychodrama at the same time I was doing comedy and realized that I was more drawn to that than the lifestyle of a comedian. I thought my character would be better suited in teaching, therapy and writing. But it gave me such an education! Once you’ve done 20 minutes of comedy in front of the New York audience at the Improv you feel you can handle pretty much anything. Confessions of a Former Child, a Therapist’s Memoir, was the first time I was able to employ my comedic style with therapy. It was not only fun to write — it was fun reading from it on the book tours.

Elaine: What’s next? Personally? Professionally? Can you talk about your newest book, “Learned Hopefulness?”

Dan: The new book looks at hope through the lens of the new research and not through any particular theory. Several new experiential interventions have been designed for it, and the Hierarchy of Hope has emerged as a way of understanding how the different models of hope and the various findings fit together. It puts the tools for transformation directly into the hands of the reader. It has been so wonderful to be deeply immersed in its development.

Elaine: What would you like your legacy to be? What accomplishments mean the most to you?

Dan: My daughter, Devon, coming to MAPP feels like the real reason I must have come here. Marty and James asked us to be their Assistant Instructors this year and we were deeply honored to be MAPP’s first father-daughter AIs. At one point during the end of the semester, Devon (who is pregnant and due at the end of this month) and I were sitting together in class as James identified us as the first legacy team to go through MAPP. I realized in that moment that there were three generations in that MAPP class, and that really gives me goose bumps.

The book, American Snake Pit: Hope, Grit, And Resilience in the Wake of Willowbrook, is available for cost through the publisher to agencies who wish to use it as a fundraiser. Any human service agency can either contact me directly or Stillhouse Press to receive the books and use them to raise money. If you buy the book through Amazon or Barnes & Noble, my proceeds get donated to the National Institute for People with Disabilities—this was the organization that gave me the original job back in the day.

Elaine: Wonderful! Thank you, congratulations, and cheers, Dr. Dan Tomasulo!

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