Abstract

Rebels with a Cause is a comprehensive guide to working with adolescents using action techniques and drama therapy.

Drawing on years of experience working with adolescents and of training practitioners in the field, Cossa provides a tried-and-tested model for working with adolescents in groups. Utilizing techniques found in psychodrama, sociodrama, drama therapy and sociometry, Cossa offers step-by-step practical guidelines on running a group development program and summarizes the supporting theory in easy-to-understand language. He offers advice on facilitating group and personal development, and also on working with particular groups of adolescents, for example those with developmental disabilities or from different cultures.

This illuminating and accessible book provides invaluable insight into working successfully - and enjoyably - with adolescent groups. It is essential reading for practicing therapists and anyone working with adolescents in therapeutic settings.

At a time when political and tabloid solutions for the anti-social behaviour of adolescents appear to reinforce disaffection and alienation, Mario Cossa's book is a reassuring, helpful and, above all, practical counterbalance. Rebels With A Cause, borne out of many years experience with young people, is an excellent manual for anyone working in this area.
Dramatherapy
Maria Cossa is clearly a practitioner well versed in working with adolescents and in using action techniques, thus rendering him particularly qualified to offer this resource to the community. Cossa not only understands how teenagers work, he celebrates and revels in the things that make adolescents an exciting and rewarding population with whom to work. Cossa now distills his experiences and his knowledge down to a primer that practitioners can use to begin to understand adolescents' unique needs and how action methods must be modified to work effectively with this population.
Journal of Psychotherapy, Psychodrama and Sociometry
Mario Cossa is a certified Trainer, Educator and Practitioner in Psychodrama, and Fellow of the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. He is a leading Drama Therapist and Theatre Educator, specializing in work with adolescent groups and trauma survivors, who has conducted training workshops in psychodrama, action methods and applied drama all over the world.

This book compliments and expands the broad repertoire of occupational therapists in the business of facilitating appropriate development of adolescents to their maturity.

Mario generously gives us a large and highly useful toolbox of ideas which he has personally developed over many years of working with adolescents as well as many approaches gathered from colleagues who he credits along the way. The great majority of the ideas and observations in this section are in fact applicable to practitioners working with groups of any kind, old, young or in between.

Connections for 2006 - Spring
This book is a valuable resource for all Training Centre libraries and I recommend those of us who are working with adolescents or are beginning to feel drawn to such work to add this book to your own library shelves for easy, ongoing referral. In saying that there is also much value in this book for group leaders who are both looking for practical resources about using action methods, and are considering the integration of more of your psychodramatic training and techniques into your group practice.
Australia/New Zealand Psychodrama Association
If you work with adolescents in groups from a psychodynamic framework or are considering how you might make better use of action techniques in your group work I think you will find this book invaluable. It will develop the way you think about your groups, plant your work and deepen you understanding as to how action can be used in group work with adolescents to make the work more interesting, productive and enjoyable.
Australia/New Zealand Psychodrama Association
This is a wonderfully rounded creation, packed with theoretical, referential and practical gems, wrapped up in a solid accessible structure…The bibliography contains so many useful references that it could well be headed "Everything you need to read if you work with adolescents"; and the bursting appendices offer additional practical exercises as well as sample information packs and consent forms. As a page-folding, sentence-underlining reader I am thankful that I do not have to give this book back. The sheer volume of useful content has led me to customize nearly all of its pages.
Sesame Journal
;A cornerstone in the field of psychotherapy.'
Zerka Moreno, The Moreno Institute