The Sociatry Project

Sun Jun 17 23:04:00 CDT 2007

Dear Jorge,
    1. Your description of your peace-building sociodrama workshops sound great! I want to encourage your writing them up as a paper, going into the techniques, using many examples. You can assemble parts of examples from different workshops so there is more confidentiality. The reader wants to just get an example of what goes on. If it doesn't get published, I'd post it on my website supplement to my latest anthology about applied drama.

   2. Perhaps I'd be a bit of a "devil's advocate," but I think it would be important to have people in the groups warm up to all the ways folks in a group avoid consciousness, use false rationalizations, and all the other maneuvers that sustain mental equilibrium. The actual discussions by people in political situations are laced with these lowering-consciousness maneuvers, and perhaps the only way to counter them is to know how prevalent they are, recognize the different avoidance maneuvers, identify their internal dynamics, and imagine how they can be critiqued. 

     You mentioned role reversing with more heroic figures, and that may be good, but it might be also useful to take the role of the most common sorts of folks, those who smile slightly, politely, come, go, avoid too much involvement, and in their passive way, lend support to whoever seems most zealous (even if a bit extreme). The courage to pull the extremists back to the middle may not have much group support, may not be a group norm. To warm the group up so that they will support each other and become engaged is no easy task.

      Obviously, this email complements the other one I just sent to Ed and the group.

p.s., I'm excited about the forthcoming issuance of the anthology from Routledge that you helped edit, the one on advancing theory in psychodrama!  Thanks!   Warmly, ADam
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: bulmonte21 at bluewin.ch 
  To: elindblom at gmail.com ; Adam Blatner 
  Cc: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 1:35 PM
  Subject: AW: The Sociatry Project

  Hi Eric and Adam

  my wife Natacha Navarro Roldan and me are offering  now for years workshops on peace building community work ("How to construct peace here and now"; working with large groups) using besides other ressorces psychodrama and action methods for groups. Our diagnosis of the planet focus on four basic conflicts/challenges: the dysbalance of (economic) ressources (north-south, hunger and starvation), war and terrorism, the climate/ecologic catastrophe, civic conflicts in the same society (between different cultures, genders, generations etc.). After splitting the group into subgroups by their own interest and working on prototypical scenes/images including their enactment everybody is making a role revearsal with her/his ideal model of being a trustful male/female authority (which usually range between real relationships and Jesus, Mahatma Ghandi etc.) intervening on the scenary with the words and proposals inspired by those "alter egos". Thus it is really fascinating to see how things can change if we put into action our own inner wisdom. Of course this is not the whole work but it is worthwhile to state that your fantasy, Eric, seems to target in the same direction. Finally one of the foundation for this approach besides psychodrama is Ghandis non-violance movement and the work of Deepak Chopra inside this frame.

  All the best, warmly

  Jorge

  ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----
  Von: elindblom at gmail.com
  Datum: 16.06.2007 18:56
  An: "Adam Blatner"<adam at blatner.com>
  Kopie: <list at grouptalkweb.org>
  Betreff: The Sociatry Project

  Adam

  I thought you may have recognized that (namely DSM-IV). Very perceptive, you know I was pulling your leg. "Ha, ha or, more acurately hee, hee!" Diagnose The Planet! Is that a researchable question for medicine? How about Education? (The "E" in TEP is educator. Here is another leg-pull. Oy.) 

  What I don't know is if Moreno did diagnose the planet. (Obviously, Moreno was an MD.) If so, where is that written in his works?

  Another take was that someone, this morning, asked "How would you dramatize it?" (I'm no psychodramatist.) Here is my idea on that: http://www.mediate.com/articles/ebarker4.cfm  In an empty chair, what would great people do? If asked, psychodramatically, what would Gandhi say? How about Nelson Mandela? I can email him and ask. I might. As for psychodramatizing Sociatry, that is for someone else in the group not me. Eric 

  On 6/15/07, Adam Blatner <adam at blatner.com> wrote: 
    ha ha, ... most psychiatrists I know don't take the DSM-IV all that seriously. For certain tasks the best we can say is that it seems better than previous versions; for other tasks, we just do it for the insurance companies. 
        But your axis 3 (which is really about co-morbid medical conditions)
            is funny... and provocative. 
          For what's the point of diagnosis at a certain level if the "patient" has little insight or inclination to insight?
       My point is that we are perhaps ready to begin to promote psychological mindedness as a foundation for further work.. and healing, and role theory can be a user friendly language for this. Warmly, ADam 
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From:E L
      To:Adam Blatner
      Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 3:00 PM
      Subject: Re: The Sociatry Project

      Adam

      How about this? Eric

      DSM-IV

      MULTIAXIAL DIAGNOSIS

      (PLEASE COMPLETE ALL FIVE AXES)

      AXIS I...

      Dx Code..

      Dx Code...

      AXIS II...

      Dx Code...

      AXIS III...

      Does patient have current general condition potentially relevant to understanding/ management of condition(s) in Axis I or II? 

      �� No �� Yes

      AXIS IV...

      Severity: current psychosocial stressors

      �� None �� Low �� Moderate �� High Other ��

      AXIS V: GAF Score

      Highest Past Year At first Session Current

      High �� �� �� �� �� Low

      Modified from: State of Maryland Uniform Treatment Plan Form

      On 6/14/07, Adam Blatner <adam at blatner.com> wrote: 
        Hi Eric, thoughts about trying to diagnose the planet, as an act of sociatry: 

        I have many, many diagnoses, from the prevalence of foolishness to the as-yet-untapped potential of a number of good ideas and techniques.
               A recent response, though, works from Whitehead's dictum that we should try to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of co-morbid diagnoses---if we dare to even play with that term, to presume to exercise our weak skills waay beyond our knowledge.  Co-morbid means that there can be more than one diagnosis, like a patient with diabetes AND a sprained ankle AND an anxiety reaction because he missed a crucial meeting. 

             I want to suggest that not only is our world suffering from an information explosion, but also there has been an explosion of new types of information, new categories and domains of knowledge. There has been a re-cognition of the value of considering many categories we had marginalized, dimly recognized as existing, but generally discounted. The needs and opinions of the less educated, less articulate, the feelings of infants and animals, the viewpoints of people who had generally been considered to be opponents, primitive, too elitist, too common, or others---i.e., "them" versus "us."  Psychic phenomena, mystical phenomena, dreams, visions, imagination, play, the insights of children, poets, etc.--- are becoming more respectable in our postmodern discourse. 

               The more we open to these domains the more we begin to become sensitive to phenomena that hadn't even been considered valid or relevant. What I'm getting at is that mere number crunching by computers won't do it. I'm suggesting that we've moved beyond the point of ever, ever, being able to encompass the whole world, its problems in a myriad of domains, in any theory, in any single person's mind. This is a change from a time 50 years or less ago---maybe even today for some folks---when people believed that really getting an answer, even a very extensive answer, was possible. 

        I would suggest that this is a kind of "grasping," of trying to get what cannot be gotten. Such as "fairness" in life. It is a childish residue, supported by the culture implying that it is indeed attainable. 

              The alternative isn't simply copping out and giving up. There are yet significant challenges that can be recognized and addressed in more local or limited domains. Indeed, such efforts may be better pursuit if misleading and grandiose general efforts are relinquished. 

                warmly, adam  
          ----- Original Message ----- 
          From:E L
          To:list at grouptalkweb.org
          Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:00 PM
          Subject: The Sociatry Project

          i.b.m.2, some social adam

          Thanks for your support, i.b.2! I'm shopping. I am looking for nominations from people qualified to say what the diagnosis of the planet could be. (I've asked: "Did Moreno diagnose the planet?") It is for the new fall project, "The Sociatry Project," at Harvard. For details see ASGPP forum under: "Sociatry." 

          To quote i.b.Adam I, "hee, hee." Why the quote? I have no idea.

          Eric J. Lindblom PhD Harvard University (h2o)

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