Psychodrama can be defined as the science which explores the’ truth’ by dramatic methods. It “deals with interpersonal relations and private worlds.” Thus did Dr. J. L. Moreno, originator of the method, define psychodrama. By truth, Moreno referred to the personal truth of the protagonist, the subject of a psychodrama. While we live in a common physical world, each of us knows only our personal experience of it; each of us experiences the world a little bit differently from all our companions, from everybody in the world. There is sufficient consensual agreement concerning the nature of the world-most of the time and for most people-to convince us that we are indeed sharing a common universe. This is what we generally refer to as reality. However there are simultaneously considerable differences in the perception and interpretation of this reality. In this sense each of us lives in a singular world that is not quite like that of any other person. Truth, in Moreno’s definition of psychodrama, is one’s unique perception of the world, of one’s place in that world, and of one’s relationships with the others who co-create that world.
The most important aspect of our world is the society in which we live, the people with whom we interact, our interpersonal relationships, and their relationships with each other. A psychodrama is usually a dramatization of the interpersonal relationships of the protagonist as the protagonist perceives them. Psychodrama externalizes subjective material which resides internally, perceptions, memories, thoughts, emotions, fantasies, dreams, even hallucinations and delusions, giving all these tangible form upon the psychodramatic stage. This permits the audience to perceive in a physical, concrete manner the protagonist’s subjective and usually invisible experience. More important, psychodrama allows the protagonist, with the aid of the director and auxiliary egos, to explore his/her relationships in a more explicit way than is otherwise available. A common result is that protagonists perceptions of their worlds, of themselves in that world, and of their significant others is expanded and altered in ways that allow the protagonist to make sense out of what was here-to-fore unexplainable.
In short, psychodrama allows us to explore the world that we experience and to learn more about ourselves, others who are important to us and our relationships with them.
The psychodramatic method is a way of looking at and understanding subjective human experience. It includes a number of techniques which permits us to re-visit and re-enact past experiences, examine current relationships, and to explore dreams and fantasies and our expectations of what the future may bring. The psychodramatic director serves as guide, technician and dramaturge, helping the protagonist identify important internal processes and produce them in dramatic form. Members of the group aid by being auxiliary egos, stand-ins for absent significant others. It is a systematic method which means that it can be taught and learned. This is important to know because initially psychodrama often appears to be magical and that which occurs because of the method is attributed to personal characteristics of the director.
Although psychodrama is usually considered bo be a form of psychotherapy, and has been most widely applied in the mental health fields, psychotherapy is only one of its many functions. Psychodrama is a powerful method for teaching, for training, for engendering creativity, as well as for conducting social research and Phenomenological research. It is also an art form, a true version of drama.
Guide To Training: J.L. Moreno, M.D.
Dr. J. L. Moreno (1889-1974) was a truly remarkable individual whose many contributions to the understanding of humankind have largely been overlooked by mainstream social sciences. Convinced that it was possible for human beings to live together in such a way that the benefits which one person enjoyed were not achieved solely at the cost of fellow beings, he believed that it was possible for a society to create a social order in which the value of every individual is recognized and acknowledged, a society in which all individuals can realize their potentials as creative, responsible human beings. The primary goal of his life was to create the methods which would foster the spontaneous-creative social order that he envisioned. A major Morenean thesis was that society was co-created by its members and that by learning how to master our own creativity we can influence the world around us, bringing it to function more like we know it should. His work is currently kept alive by a small number of dedicated practitioners of psychodrama, most of whom belong to one of the mental health or counseling professions.
Psychodrama differs from other methods of achieving personal understanding in that while it is a group method, it treats the individual not only as an individual, capable of creative, self-directed behavior, but simultaneously as a member and co-creator of a social system, influenced by and influencing the other members of a unique social atom. Moreno’s theories hold that we can impact and change our social environment for the better provide we are willing to acknowledge our personal creativity, learn how it use it effectively and take responsibility for our own actions.
Other methods which Dr. Moreno originated include sociometry, sociodrama, spontaneity training and role training. Sociometry provides both a theory of society as well as methods for exploring the structure of groups and reorganizing them. Sociometry supplies the infrastructure for the understanding of group dynamics. Like psychodrama, sociodrama is an action method which is applied to investigation and examining social issues and roles. Spontaneity training and role training are psychodramatic approaches with more circumscribed goals. The first develops skills for meeting unexpected exigencies of life more effectively while the latter prepares us for increased competence in anticipated situations.
Guide to Training: Training
Psychodrama training is largely concentrated upon the skills of the psychodrama director. A classical psychodrama involves a protagonist whose life events, experiences, fantasies, dreams, and interpersonal relationships provide the material of a psychodrama, and a director who serves as chief technician and dramaturge. Linda Frick (in Hale, A., 1985, Conducting Clinical Sociometric Explorations, First Workbook Edition. Roanoke: Royal Publishing Company) has analyzed the director’s role into five functions, each of which calls for a number of specific skills. In her analysis, the director is a producer, analyst/guide, social investigator, as well as group member. Among other things directors must learn how to attend to their own personal warming up processes as well as to the warming up processes of the group as a whole and to the warming up process of the protagonist. Directors must have mastered the uses of the various psychodramatic techniques so well that the selection of a specific technique for a specific purpose is second nature. They must be able to facilitate the expression of the protagonist’s emotions as they arise, and that may include the expression of profound pain and fear or raging anger. Directors must also learn how to make protagonists feel safe in exploring those life experiences which may hold scary feelings.
These are skills which, like writing or painting or sculpting or riding a bicycle, can only be learned through practice. Psychodrama training workshops therefore consist largely of psychodramas in which workshop participants are given opportunities to practice as directors or to become protagonists. Being protagonist is an integral part of training because it is necessary for directors to have experienced what it is like to be a protagonist, and because directors must thoroughly understand their own internal responsiveness; they must know themselves as completely as possible, a ever-continuing project, by the way. Since psychodrama is usually a group endeavor, it is also important for directors to develop skills as group leaders and to learn to read and use group structure, the sociometery of the group.
The psychodrama training workshops of The National Psychodrama Training Center are residential in nature. They are held in conference centers where meals and bed are provided. Living together, working and playing together allows group process to proceed in ways that non-residential workshops cannot provide. Workshops typically start on a Thursday evening and end Sunday at noon. This permits eight three-hour sessions.
The training process, following the precedents initiated by J. L. Moreno, is non-linear. In practice this means that any workshop can serve as an introduction to the newcomer to psychodrama who has no previous experience, and can simultaneously serve as the completion of a long period of training for the advanced student who is ready for certification. At any workshop one will find participants with a wide variety of experience with psychodrama training. Experienced participants help newer ones learn the method, and enhance their own training by learning through training. This non-linear approach gives the maximum flexibility to the training process. Everybody proceeds at their own pace. Being unable to attend a specific workshop does not hamper your progress.
Guide to Training: Training (Continued)
This model assumes that a participant learns something new at each workshop, something which the individual which practices during the interval between workshops. This inter-workshop activity serves to prepare the participant to learn something new at the next workshop attended. The training process is self-regulated by each participant who decides whether to attend one workshop a year or five.
The first session of a workshop is usually a group-building session in which established interpersonal relationships are recognized and renewed and new ones are begun. Information about the group, each of which is a unique event, begins to emerge. The agenda that group members have brought in, the individual and collective warming up processes and the workshop goals of the participants, start surfacing. Making this information known to all assists the group to maximally satisfy the needs of the group members.
Many of the subsequent sessions feature the production of classic psychodrama sessions in which participants have an opportunity to be protagonists, directors and auxiliary egos, who take the roles of absent significant others. A large workshop group may divide into smaller groups so that two, three or four psychodramas may occur during a single session. After it has been produced, each psychodrama session is processed. This is a special training event in which the group discusses how the elements of the psychodrama method were utilized in this specific drama. Techniques, method, theory and philosophy may be examined during processing.
Some of the workshop sessions may be devoted to special training exercises aimed at preparing the newcomer to psychodrama to take on the highly complex role of the director. Other sessions may feature variations of the psychodramatic and sociometric methods such as role training and sociodrama. On occasion the group may engage in formal sociometric exploration.
Most workshops address psychodrama training in a global or generic way. Some workshops, however, are dedicated to specific topics of interest such as dealing with guilt and forgiveness, managing rage, exploring the meaning of existential issues such as life, love and death. Specific psychodramatic issues such as catharsis, strategies of directing, and auxiliary work have been the focus of a training workshop. All workshops provide the participant an opportunity to be an active part of the group process, indeed insist upon active involvement, and all workshops take into account the needs and desires of those attending.
Guide to Training: Training (Continued)
This model assumes that a participant learns something new at each workshop, something which the individual which practices during the interval between workshops. This inter-workshop activity serves to prepare the participant to learn something new at the next workshop attended. The training process is self-regulated by each participant who decides whether to attend one workshop a year or five.
The first session of a workshop is usually a group-building session in which established interpersonal relationships are recognized and renewed and new ones are begun. Information about the group, each of which is a unique event, begins to emerge. The agenda that group members have brought in, the individual and collective warming up processes and the workshop goals of the participants, start surfacing. Making this information known to all assists the group to maximally satisfy the needs of the group members.
Many of the subsequent sessions feature the production of classic psychodrama sessions in which participants have an opportunity to be protagonists, directors and auxiliary egos, who take the roles of absent significant others. A large workshop group may divide into smaller groups so that two, three or four psychodramas may occur during a single session. After it has been produced, each psychodrama session is processed. This is a special training event in which the group discusses how the elements of the psychodrama method were utilized in this specific drama. Techniques, method, theory and philosophy may be examined during processing.
Some of the workshop sessions may be devoted to special training exercises aimed at preparing the newcomer to psychodrama to take on the highly complex role of the director. Other sessions may feature variations of the psychodramatic and sociometric methods such as role training and sociodrama. On occasion the group may engage in formal sociometric exploration.
Most workshops address psychodrama training in a global or generic way. Some workshops, however, are dedicated to specific topics of interest such as dealing with guilt and forgiveness, managing rage, exploring the meaning of existential issues such as life, love and death. Specific psychodramatic issues such as catharsis, strategies of directing, and auxiliary work have been the focus of a training workshop. All workshops provide the participant an opportunity to be an active part of the group process, indeed insist upon active involvement, and all workshops take into account the needs and desires of those attending.
Guide To Training: Psychodrama and Trial Lawyers
Psychodrama and related methods have along history in the education of trial lawyers and an article, “The Use of Psychodrama and Role Playing in Improving the Interpersonal Skills of Lawyers” appeared in the 1959 issue of the psychodrama journal, Group Psychotherapy. More recently psychodrama has been advocated and reintroduced into continuing education projects for lawyers by John Ackerman, John Johnson and Gerry Spence who has made it a central concept in his annual Trial Lawyers College on Thunderhead Ranch in Wyoming. As Ackerman, director of the National Criminal Defense College, expressed it “We chose psychodrama because psychodrama teachers the lawyer to create solutions to the problems they encounter. This is preferable to teaching lawyers solutions which may or may not fit the situations in which they find themselves.”
Spence especially appreciates the self-awareness which psychodrama so powerfully fosters and which he is adamant is necessary to the consistently successful trial lawyer. Among other things, it is the trial lawyers awareness and acknowledgment of their own feelings in he moment, especially anxiety, which allows them to engage meaningfully with jury members, witnesses and judges.
In addition he has found a number of parallels between the psychodrama method and his unique approach to trial law. Perhaps the most potent single psychodramatic technique which lawyers can utilize is the role reversal, putting themselves in the place of the other individuals in the courtroom in order to get a sense of what may be going on that cannot be seen from the outside. This information alone can give the trained trial lawyer a considerable advantage.
Some lawyers who have taken additional training in psychodrama have use re-enactment as a means of learning more about their clients and about the events which are at the center of their legal problems. Almost all of those who have used this method believe that it can be very widely used to excellent effect.