psychodrama, action methods, Morenianism et al

[Peter Howie]

Hi All,

Changing the name has many problem elements. As some of us have experienced 
this with the tele discussion - some recently wanted to replace it with 
rapport and some thought otherwise. A name is only what we make it out to 
be - of course this is a social contructivist approach to knowledge 
formation - that is: we jointly come to a loose (sometimes very loose) 
agreement about what knowledge is, and we arrive at it thourgh discussions 
that use the term, discussions about the term, referring to it in other 
ways and eventually that is what the knowledge becomes irrespective of what 
anyone else thinks it is - it has no external 'truth' - unless of course we 
all decide that it does have some external truth in which case it then does:)

No, the psychodrama one is what I am on about. Many people have no idea 
about psychodrama the word, the method, what it is, what it is not - so 
often the response is "What is that". In todays marketing oriented world 
this would be seen as an invitation - and what every modern marketer is 
after is an invitation from a potential client. How you or I answer that 
question is what I am trying to work out.

Answering the question "What is psychodrama?" is quite tricky and depends 
to a great extent on why the person who is asking the question is doing so. 
Have you ever heard or ever found yourself, when asked that question: 
pausing, looking slightly glazed, internally picturing the vastness of 
psychodrama, experiences, teaching, applications etc etc, and then saying 
something like "It is a method...." or "It is a form of drama that..." or 
"it is a type of theory" or "It is something developed by..." or "It is 
done by trained...." or "The training requires ten gazillion hours of 
...."  or "Its a bit like (something else - role play, story et al)   :)

If anyone asked me what chewing gum was I would say "Something you stick in 
your mouth and chew on."

I wouldn't talk about how it was discovered, how it improves gums, how it 
reduces plaque causing bacteria, what it is made of, the different flavours 
available, how it is cheap.

I could also say "Something you can blow bubbles with"

I wouldn't be likely to talk about the companies that produce it and how 
the US companies produce the best chewing gum (I would save that for the 
chewing gum convention), nor would I talk about the corporate takeovers and 
how Mars confections rules the world, nor about three three differrent 
roots of the gum, nor the difference between natural gum from trees and 
natural gum from oil and gum made as a byproduct of other things.

I could say something like "It tastes great! Here try some."

I wouldn't be so interested in talking about the social advantages of 
chewing gum, not chewing gum, the rituals around gum, what the gum is doing 
under that table, how rich people only chew gum in private.

I might say "Sorry I just ate my last piece."

A rather long winded allegory I think. But it captures something about how 
I respond when asked about psychodrama. One thing I am really conscious of 
is that when I talk about psychodrama I am more conscious of what I think a 
person ought to hear, should hear, needs to hear, must hear about it. I am 
less conscious about the world view of the person asking the question and 
phrasing the answer in terms that make sense to that person. I am mostly 
conscious of my world view and how much I love it. My world view and my 
love for the method has developed over many years.

Anyway this email is a belated response to creating new words. Creating new 
words is good if there is something new that is created that has few or no 
antecedents. Psychodrama, sociodrama, sociometry, role training are some og 
these words - including tele amongst these.

I am still trying to find my versions of "Something you stick in your mouth 
and chew on" for describing psychodrama - and not in a dumbing down manner.

Cheers

Peter in Brisbane

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