Peter's marketing question

[REGINA SEWELL]

Adam has quite concisely laid out how our "product" is fabulous.  "My thinking is that they make a significant contributin to the infrastructure of skills people need to think creatively in the 21st century. People need role distance, they need to dis-identify with the roles they play, the parts of themselves."   In doing so, they can better reflect on their thinking. I'd like to root deeper into Peter's question.

Adam has Hi all,

A marketing book I have been reading has presented me with a
provocative thought and challenge. I will enter this discussion from
a story telling point of view.

Now if I lived in the USA and I could I would but the new iPhone. I
would do this because I have become familiar with Apple and the
remarkable products they concoct and produce. The Appple iPod has
changed the way I run and walk for exercise - I mostly listen to
radio science shows, discussion shows and in depth interview shows. I
could happily talk about how the product has assisted me to extend
time. I will happily sell Apple p[roducts because I like them and I
am proud to have purchased them. The iPhone doesn't get here until
nest year and I hope most of its foibles will have been ironed out. I
will most likely but one anyway and think of it as my very last
purchase in that field of mobile phone ...........

Anyway you get the drift.

What is/are the equivalent products/services/things that
'psychodrama' (here used as a generic term for all the Institutes and
practitioners worldwide), what are the products that I will proudly
exclaim and proclaim about to others? What are the psychodramatic
things that I will do/will get/will undertake that I will show off to
others that I have done much like I do with the iPod? Amd by others I
don't mean the converted - I mean the pre-converted, innocent,
ignorant, unknowing people.

This is the area I am trying to come to grips with. First responses
from me have me wondering about the over bias towards therapy and the
negative/suspect connotations towards therapy.

Anyway - this challenge has me wondering and gettting creative.

Cheers

Peter Howie
Brisbane, Australia


Because many of us totally groove on Moreno's notion that our objective is no less than the (healing and transformation - my words for it) of all mankind, I'm thinking of this in terms of a social movement...  How do we "sell" aliveness and benefits of creativity to a culture that has undergone McDonaldization and Dysnification to the point that creativity comes in a box at a store rather than in an empty space?  And, outside of a spiritual context, how do we "sell" the transformational potential of achieving role distance in a culture so embedded in the roles that they play that they don't even see their roles?

At some level, we are trying to loosely trying to transform what Goffman dubbed "Frameworks" which can at the most simplistic level can be viewed as paradigms or world views, which nestle one inside another (ie there are cultural frameworks (or understandings and beliefs about the world) and within those cultural frameworks rest sub-cultural frameworks and within those rest smaller subsets of group frameworks and finally, within those rest our individual frameworks ... so in some cultures dogs = pets, in others, dogs = a source of food and in either an individual framework of a person who had a traumatic dog bite might be dogs = dangerous and ferocious).  Social movements do this through use of rhetoric by linking the frameworks of their movement to the frameworks of something that's already revered or desired in the culture.  For example, in the U.S., it's no wonder the anti-abortion movement clasped onto "Right to Life" given Thomas Jefferson's declaration that we have the
 "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" while the pro abortion side grasp onto "freedom of choice" - both life and freedom are already core American values while being anti anything is not so cool.  And note how most movements often try to hook up with pop-cultural stars and/or popular charismatic leaders or icons no matter how odd the fit (I'm thinking of Fred Phelps use of the bible (invoking Christ) as a way to incite hatred of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people (case in point, he and his group's antics at Mathew Shepard's funeral, and later at the funerals of dead soldiers).

Outside of the self-help junkies and in creative enclaves of actors/writers/performers where talking about one's therapy/therapist visit has cultural capital, most folks still don't talk about the fact that they are seeing a counselor, doing counseling, or going to workshops to deal with issues, perhaps because the larger cultural framework is very clear that we should be able to handle our problems on our own. So, what is the "hook" for psychodrama?  What pre-existing cultural model that people gladly talk about can we use to mobilize the masses?