psychodrama's mission

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Peter, this is most interesting! I appreciate that you can see both sides to this problem:
    What to call ourselves in the wider market? Which words will sell to businessmen, general folks who want life coaching, teachers, therapists who don't want to commit to learning to do full classical psychodrama, etc.?
     You wrote on October 22, 2007:
PH  My take on the word psychodrama is newly arrived at and is somewhat based on musing from reading marketing books as well as some recent personal experiences. 
        So the marketing idea is this - remarkable things get noticed and paid attention to. That is - they get remarked on and in this web savvy age being remarked upon can create 'winning' situations. Psychodrama, the word, to novice people who don't know about psychodrama, which is most everybody, is a word that doesn't compute and demands a question like "What is psychodrama?" Whereas "action methods" - well who cares - it is a safe description and might be useful for a funding application to a Government board. Its like calling space travel - flying. Yes it is flying and people can form pictures of flying. But space travel is more than flying. 
          AB: You might be right! 

PH: Now my recent personal experience of that question "What is psychodrama?" seems to lead me to again and again want to describe it as a therapy.
         AB: Aha! You see that problem, also! 
PH  I find it hard to escape that trap of convenience.
            But when I think about other aspects of psychodrama - surplus reality, future visioning, relationship development I go "Damn why didn't I talk about that. Or spontaneity or creativity or freeing people up or liberty. I can usually craft a great response afterwards.  I get caught up in describing how it is used which is about a boring as can be.
         AB: Ah, interesting. I've gotten better at describing it in ways that aren't boring. Tools for creative thinking and mental flexibility. Tools for working with relationships, tools that most other approaches don't have.
      Tools that can be integrated with other approaches and make them richer... etc.

   PH  And sometimes I notice, though less and less at the moment, a cringe factor in me - to the word psychodrama - so I wonder whether I have been creating a role response in others rather than them having the response to start with.
       AB: Still, it might be instructive to bring that cringe factor to the surface and examine its components. Some might be more rationally or politically valid and some might involve more personal issues.

    PH  I know you mentioned therapists - and they might be aware of aspects of psychodrama they are not comfortable with - but a person who has heard nothing has prejudices that I cannot assume I know about. Anyway - still working on it. 
   Still working on "What is the story of psychodrama" for different cultures in our community. Cheers Peter

      AB: in the most recent USA journal of Group Psychotherapy, I write about Moreno's contributions, many of which have little to do with psychodrama per se. 
        Leibniz, Newton, and other geniuses made many different kinds of contributions, and it would be foolish to describe their work only in terms of one of their better known creations. 

        Let's keep playing and include others ideas, too. Warmly, Adam





------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  Grouptalk mailing list
  List at grouptalkweb.org
  http://grouptalkweb.org/mailman/listinfo/list_grouptalkweb.org



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  No virus found in this incoming message.
  Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
  Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.5/1084 - Release Date: 10/21/2007 3:09 PM
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20071022/1fae7614/attachment.html