Fw: sociatry track

Sun Aug 26 16:14:23 CDT 2007

I appreciate the depth of this attempt to be descriptive in some defining way using all kinds of wonderful sounding phrases and it leaves me a bit confused. I reiterate that for me it is quite simple. Sociatry is the fishbowl. The tools are sociometry in its different forms, either cold where no rearrangement of the groups is made vs the hot form where rearrangement is made, Sociodrama, and psychodrama. All of these tools will facilitate the increase of spontaneity within the system...i'e. the opening up of choices for all, increase in role competence, and expansion of role capability for all. 
I don't see it as any more complicated than that which is why I loved what Moreno had laid down as these principals were easy to grasp and lead to action directly. 
In an interview some time ago, my present mentor, Malidoma Some ( pronounced Somay ) stated the following which to me is the essence of what we are dealing with. His use of the term "West" can be understood to be the non indigenous world to a large extent. 

"In the West, what I've noticed is that what is called a community is more a conglomeration of individuals who are so self-centered and isolated that there is a kind of suspicion of the other, simply because there isn't enough knowledge of the other to remove that suspicion. So trust becomes the challenge to actual community.

 It is a very tricky thing, because I think that capitalism encourages this kind of isolation as a good environment for consumerism. And there is a relationship between a consumer society and these individuals who are defined by isolation from one another, and private space and private ownership. 

 The community I am talking about is one in which respect for the person is based upon that person's irreplaceable position in the world. To live with the knowledge that an approved project was the reason for one's birth commands respect for the sacred. In the absence of initiation as a remembering and transforming experience, the modern world has created career counseling. 

 In the village, the houses are built with entrances that are doorless. That is the first sign that the people have a very, very different sense of one another. 

 When I go home and I want to take a nap, there are some questions as to what is wrong with me. And if I want to spend a little time by myself, everyone wonders if something is the matter with me. In the village, everything is at the same time private and public.

 I don't think that there is any need to create in the West the kind of community that there is in the indigenous world. But there is certainly a need to come closer together and to learn about each other sufficiently so as to bridge the gap that separates us.

 Sarah: What you're talking about goes to the very heart of Western culture. Privacy and freedom are held very dear to many people.

  Malidoma: The sense of privacy people have in the West is a very lonely privacy; it is a very frightening privacy. The freedom that goes along with it is of pretty much the same nature; it is a freedom that is weighty, that is a burden.

 Within the context of real community, privacy and freedom are not lost. Community provides a greater sense of freedom - a freedom based on a deep understanding of each individual's purpose. When people lose their soul's essence, they have to borrow the vision of some ideologist crippled with separatist visions of freedom."

So that is the clue for me to "Who Shall Survive?"

Blessings, Bud
PS, the entire dialog  can be seen at 
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC34/Some.htm

Ann Hale <annehale at swva.net> wrote:        
 ----- Original Message -----  From: Ann Hale 
 To: grouptalk 
 Cc: Rollo Browne 
 Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 10:35 AM
 Subject: sociatry track

 I just got in yesterday's mail an issue of the  ANZPA Journal, no. 14 (December, 2005) which I missed having in my collection.  I've been making my way through its contents and have been reading with  excitement, "The Practical Science of Sociatry" by Dr. Kevin Franklin,  psychodramatist,TEP and clinical psychologist from Perth, Australia. (pages  53-58). Rollo Brown, editor of the journal, edited an excerpt of the paper for  the journal.

 My excitement is that Kevin describes in Morenian  terms the debate between Adam and Ed, which caught our attention as it was  descriptive of dis-unity we fell all around us as a society at war with  itself.  He calls us to Moreno;s vision of three universes,  ending with describing the third universe as progressive which has at its  heart loving oneself and other as oneself.   Regarding the  issue of politics, Kevin writes "Through our governing mechanisms we can arrange  to quarentine mental illness, delinquency, terrorism, criminality and other  problematic groups from mainstream society to avoid the problem that IS  society" .  And about sociatry specifically he writes: "  Psychodrama and sociatry are practical sciences: they are alive social sciences.  They use the psychodramatic paradigm whereas current social sciences use the  psychological paradigm, It is psychodrama's practical, developmental and  socially unifying ethic in this healing science that makes its
 young cousin  sociatry a progressive cultural path of best practice. This is a path from  society's current confounding, its confusion, and its induction of  dis-order in the populace. Sociatry is a way to systemic social unity and the  stability of valued socio-diversity.   ...   If we do not  trust our process of creative spontaneity learning then we are instead producing  what Moreno called sociosis. That is where role taking mentalities  dominate spontaneity learning and identity formation to a living death. And that  end-state singularity is in service of a reductionist world view where there is  one right way to live."

 It is such an inspiring and challening  article.  If people want to order the journal (my favorite psychodrama  read) or back copies contact rollo.browne at bigpond.com  
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Barnett J. Weiss, MA, LCSW (Bud) 
7410 Ridge Blvd 2D Brooklyn, NY 11209 
Cell (917)-751-3395 http://www.budweiss.worldventures.com

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