Role taking

[Adam Blatner]

sharing with all

Peter Howie  To: Adam 9:50 PM
     Yes it would be good to send this out over grouptalk.
I read the story and wondered if the Kevin version would be "There once was a child who fell into the delusion that he was only a boy...."c heers Peter
      At 12:07 PM 27/08/2007, Adam wrote: Dear Peter, yes, interesting... maybe we need a phrase called role accepting, or, more in keeping with other social psychologists, role assignment. 
      I'm aware of Moreno's division of role taking, role playing, and role creating, and that's a very important issue---i.e., degrees of spontaneity brought to each phase or degree of the process. I'd add, degrees of self-awareness, also, and there may be some other variables. 
      A good deal of drama can come up at the point where it is questionable, at least in the here and now, whether anyone is forced to take a role. How can we creatively work with those roles so that they are less oppressive at least at the level of one's inner processes. (See the prince who was really a chicken:  http://www.blatner.com/adam/pdntbk/nachmstory.htm  )
 
    Would you like to send this out over grouptalk? Warmly, Adam
----- Original Message ----- 
 Peter Howie to:Adam August 26, 2007 8:47 PM 
Subject: Role taking 
Dear Adam,
  Only one bit that I want to address in this email - the 'role taking' stuff. Kevin has pointed out in conferences in Australia and New Zealand and papers to journals over the years, and it has taken me a while to focus enough to understand what he is saying and meaning, that as we develop as a human being we are required to take roles whether or not they suit us, are good for us or assist us in any way - for instance and very problematically gender roles. There are probably others ways and other psychological/ sociological/ anthropological ways of saying a similar thing. Kevin has pointed out that in our Western cultures there is little or no space to do other than accept gender stereotypes and that when a gay person accepts a heterosexual role they begin to lose themselves and their spontaneity. 

A graphic way would be to say 'straight jacketing' a person with a role they are forced to take. Role taking in the course of reasonable child development or adult development for new roles, requires a time of role playing prior to role taking. It is in the role playing that individuals can develop ways of presenting or acting, ways of feeling about the world and themselves in a role and what the thinking might be that goes with a role. If adequate role playing is allowed, and an individual has a need and an interest,  then they begin to take on a role (role taking) as their's or it could be said they begin to behave in way that you could describe them as having a role. This is the essence and remarkable nature of role training and psychodrama - creating a space for real role playing - taking a role and adjusting it, mucking around with it, seeing oneself in the role from other's perspectives etc etc. Wonderful stuff.
  Cheers  Peter Howie Brisbane, Australia
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