asgpp and group dynamics

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Marlo, 

    First, about your identity biography: While lengthy, there were many intriguing permutations! I had just been reading a chapter by a social psychologist about identity---what we affiliate with as part of our self-concept. Which roles, groups, etc. Your story illustrated the way these can shift with maturation and experience. Near the end you shift from categories that you've inherited to categories that you've chosen and co-constructed. 
       I appreciate your generosity of spirit and enthusiasm! It adds to the overall morale of the group.
 However, since it involves our shared experience at the ASGPP conference, I do want to comment on the part near the end:

MA: However, I'm now in another identity quandary.  Although the psychodramatic community was very welcoming and continues to be welcoming, there is still the notion of the CP/PAT/TEP journey that can end up seeming quite exclusionary.  You can't do this unless you're a TEP, you can't count these hours towards your total unless the trainer is a TEP, some of the hours can count if the trainer is a PAT, you can't become a CP unless you have a master's degree, can you really call yourself a psychodramatist if you're not a CP?  What's that all about?   

      AB: The whole business of certification is awkward. You need to role reverse with the folks who were there in the late 1970s. There were folks doing wild encounter groups, confrontational, destructive stuff, calling it psychodrama, and sullying our whole field as a result. Is there any way to differentiate ourselves? The same thing has happened in medicine, in the various medical specialties, in many other fields: It's called professional recognition, certification, licensure, accreditation, how can and should we separate those who have a certain minimal level of competence from those who have not yet demonstrated that level?  It's a socio-economic and legal thing: It's not just for guild protection, but also for field reputation. Right now there are states in which anyone can call him/herself a therapist or psychotherapists. Other states have legal licensure restrictions on this term. It's for the protection of the public and demanded by the public in some regions. 
        Psychodrama is awkward because there are many who are using the method in ways that go beyond therapy, in education, etc. Many use psychodramatic methods or sociometric techniques or role training and they use it within the therapeutic framework of Gestalt or Family therapy or something else. It's not just one method/school. Many use these techniques in other ways, too. If the setting isn't "therapy" (as a socio-cultural category of contract), then is it necessary to become certified?

       And what do we mean by exclusion? Some of my best friends aren't certified. (smile). I not-infrequently suggest that people in training not bother with getting certified: "Are you going to present yourself to the public as a psychodramatist?" "Are you going to offer training in psychodrama?"  If not---and sometimes these are not what the person wants, s/he just wants to learn about it, some of the concepts, some of the techniques--- then I say, "Well, maybe you don't need to pursue certification. It depends what you want to do with your future."

     Does this help?

MA: Then I go to the Convention and there's a bit of tension about the elders and exclusion and new people and exclusion and there are innuendos about what the old guard would do and what the new school folks would do and I  feel like I'm right back in Freshman History class, talking about the White Man and the Iron Horse taking the land from the Red Man.  What the heck is going on in my newly-found Nirvana?  Will this community tear itself apart?  Will we survive?
      AB: This shows you what emotionally loaded and very vague words can evoke in a group! There are those who throw them around for motives that may be unconscious and unclear; and those who respond to the call of these emotions as they resonate with rescue or conciliatory tendencies.
     Exclusion is a particularly evocative term. Anyone who claims to be excluded (another form of oppression) is believed. In fact, no one is excluding. Okay, maybe someone is, but I can't tell who that would be. We'd have to get very specific (horrors!) and name events, attribute motivation. Does A's being distracted in a conversation with B really count as a snub to C who then feels "excluded"?  Remember how easy it was for envy and jealousy to distort interpretations among peer groups in middle school. Oh, she's so conceited!  This accusation was thrown around freely and easily believed by we against her! 
      Consider the possibility that while it is a common neurotic symptom to experience being excluded, that sometimes in fact no exclusion may be taking place. 

      Alternative possibility---playing off Nina Garcia's comment at the end of her acceptance speech at the Awards Banquet: Citing a little note on one of these advertisements: "You must be present to win." 
        I interpret this to mean that it's not just tele and sociometry and preference and sociometric wealth and other jargon, as if its all phoney, but rather that there are folks in the organization who show up, show up regularly, hang in there in spite of repeated frustrations, put up with what might be imagined to be snubs and lacks of appreciation, give of themselves, give more, help move chairs, join committees, and in the end folks see their names, hear about them, and they are perceived as in-group. Anyone can do this if they put out a bit. And those who sit back and wait to be loved for just breathing--- well, that's what I used to do when I was a little kid. So I think we need to question that "exclusion" accusation.

Marlo A: Oh wait, isn't there a book about that?  Guess what book I haven't read yet?  I did buy the Student Edition at the Convention and will be slowly and steadily working my way through it.  I have a feeling it may have a great deal to say about how this organization can and will survive and what would be necessary for it to do so.  I'll keep you posted. Until then, I'm a Psychodramatist.  That's what I want to be called.  Thanks for asking.  
      AB: Yeah, good. I'll be interested in your reading and what you get out of it! How you interpret it, what you find useful and what you find less so. We should not assume that it's all golden, every word, every sentence. 

       
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