Therapy seekers do need to be careful, Pramann says. Not all "action" therapies promote healing. Not all practitioners are trained. (The number of hours he spent getting certified in psychodrama was almost the equivalent of a second master's degree, he says.)

And incidentally, there is no agreed-on definition of "action" therapy. "Are we talking about holding therapies?" Pramann asks. Because children have died in those. "Are we talking about some of the weird stuff that went on in the 1960s?"

Several months ago, Lisa Woirhaye took a job with a local government agency, helping women find jobs. She loves the work.

Woirhaye doesn't tell her own story very often anymore, she says. Still, she's sure her past helps her understand women who are sad and scared.

As for herself, "I still believe in experiential work, over and above talk therapy." But lately, she says, she's decided experiential is not the final chapter for her.

A stand-in for her ex-husband allowed her to work through her anger and grief, she says. Yet she never said goodbye to the real man. That's why, pretty soon, with something called "victim/offender dialogue" through the State Department of Corrections, Woirhaye is going to see him one last time.

When she visits her ex-husband in prison, he'll have someone with him to give him moral support, Woirhaye says. As for her, she'll bring along her therapist. It turns out Woirhaye has been seeing a talk therapist lately, a woman who tries to incorporate a little "experiential" into her cognitive therapy, because she knows that's how Woirhaye works best.

Meanwhile, Woirhaye's friends, who were so proud when she testified against her ex-husband at his parole hearing last year, are unhappy about this visit, she says. But this is not about getting back together with him, she insists. "That will never, ever happen."

Woirhaye says she just wants to talk. She has questions. She wants to hear him explain why he did what he did — and she will accept no excuses. Also, when she sees him in a couple of weeks, she says she might ask him what happened to him when he was a boy.

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E-mail: susan@desnews.com