psychodrama's mission

[Peter Howie]

Hi Adam,

I wrote this before I finished your email - it provoked some earlier 
considerations that fit here.

At a recent (in the last 12 months) local practitioners and ANZPA members 
met for a strategic planning session. One out-there outcome was that a 
psychodramatist would be considered in the same professional vein as say a 
lawyer, an accountant and such like. i.e. Going to see a psychodramatist 
had to do with getting professional advice and service regarding injecting 
spontaneity, creativity into an organisation (family) and thinking through 
the relationship (sociometry) aspects and the roles that were 
overdeveloped, underdeveloped etc in people and the group. Freeing up 
log-jams would be one aspect.

I am still thinking through this aspect.

While not everyone might need a therapist - everyone needs an accountant - 
because the number/tax/law stuff is too darn hard,  a counsellor is useful 
at certain times in ones life, a psychodramatist is also useful at certain 
times in ones life both for individuals, groups, organisations, communities.

I think I am coming to the conclusion that the word Moreno cooked up 
"Psychodrama" is the best thing going for psychodrama. It is like no other 
thing - and Moreno was keen on creating words that had no real pre-cursors. 
And it would be better, in my opinion, that it not be compared to 
counselling, psychology, therapy and the like. While these things are safe 
and knowable when referring people to them as ways of understanding 
psychodrama, they are also limited and narrowly defined in themselves and 
create a certain warm up in listeners. By comparing psychodrama to these 
other things we actually build up the other things not psychodrama which 
then becomes a sub section of psychology or counselling or therapy when 
psychodrama is anything but!

Cheers for now I need to go and consult my local Psychodramatist about a 
lack of spontaneity in my company.

Cheers

Peter Howie
Brisbane, Australia




At 03:38 PM 10/19/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>    In the course of writing a friend about my interest in psychodrama, I 
> found myself
>explaining my interest thus:
>The world really, really needs this stuff, these concepts and tools. It 
>may not need the
>whole package of classical psychodrama very often, but it needs to be 
>using these methods
>far more often!
>      Ordinary people---this is one of my targets---need to learn a 
> practical type of
>psychology that includes experiential methods, and there are many 
>components, from role
>reversal to knowing about and working with nonverbal aspects of 
>communication, that are
>absolutely necessary for conducting effective approaches to working with 
>people, raising
>kids, getting along with spouses, being on committees, management, 
>education, and on and
>on.
>       Although I cannot attend to the promotion of all its potentials, I 
> think the general
>complex of Moreno's contributions--
>   role theory, sociodrama, sociometry, diagraming relationships, action 
> learning,
>rehearsal, psychodrama, psychodramatic techniques, role playing, 
>integrations with other
>creative arts approaches, improvisational theatre, spontaneity training, 
>valuing
>creativity, the spirituality of creativity immanent in each soul, etc.--- 
>these are
>elements that are original, not found much elsewhere, and would deeply 
>expand and enrich
>many other approaches.
>       There is much room for people's continued creativity in refining 
> these approaches. I
>imagine Moreno's relationship to the behavioral sciences to be analogous, 
>for example, to
>Louis Pasteur, the major pioneer of the theory of germs, in the early-mid 
>19th century. I
>recognize that there has been a great deal of refining work in 
>microbiology in the last
>170 years.
>
>     Well, I just wanted to pass this along. Say, have any of you read my 
> recent paper on
>the Journal about Moreno's contributions? I'd be interested in some 
>feedback. Warmly, Adam
>
>
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