Nolte's Thoughts on Psychodrama

[Edward Schreiber]

Hi John,

Wow, what a thoughtful advance.
I want to read it your suggestions more thoroughly and respond again.
I did not want to let it go by without saying I really think you are  
providing leadership.
Thank you so much.

Ed


On Feb 15, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Adam Blatner wrote:

> To Grouptalk:
>
>     John Nolte, a trainer of psychodrama who has also been involved  
> in bringing psychodrama to the legal profession, wrote the  
> following on the ASGPP website forum. He gave me permission to send  
> this out for your interest. Part 1 addresses the scope of the  
> field, and in a few ways I agree with him, especially about re- 
> visioning psychodrama as a broader field that involves  
> communications in general rather than just therapy. In some ways--- 
> re the politics of how to deal with certification, etc.--- I  
> haven't taken any position. (My skill of political negotiations is  
> not well-developed.) Still, I think that he raises is worthy of  
> wider dissemination and discussion. Warmly, Adam
>                      - - - - -
>
> From John Nolte: Diatribe  (2/12/08):
>     As long as psychodramatic practice is limited to the mental  
> health field, it is likely to have little effect upon society at  
> large. There simply aren’t that many mental health patients who  
> will be exposed to the method. There is a multitude of situations  
> in our society in which psychodrama and sociometry could prove  
> exceedingly useful if they were more widely known. Only when  
> psychodrama is utilized in many of its functions other than  
> psychotherapy can we expect it to play a significant role in society.
>
> Although much lip service is paid to the importance of non-clinical  
> applications of psychodrama within the psychodrama collective and  
> its organizational expression, the American Society for  
> Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy, little else, with  
> very few refreshing exceptions, is done to encourage or support  
> those functions and applications of psychodrama which lie outside  
> the mental health domain.
>
> Although early volumes of the journal, Group Psychotherapy, were  
> replete with articles on and describing non-clinical applications  
> of psychodrama, few such articles are published in the journal  
> today. A large majority of the presentations at annual conferences  
> are concerned with the therapeutic function of psychodrama, often  
> attempting to marry psychodrama with one of a variety of other  
> methods.1 It does not help that psychodrama is usually defined as a  
> method of psychotherapy or of group psychotherapy.
>
> We can find a number of reasons why this is so beginning with the  
> fact that J. L. Moreno was a psychiatrist who developed psychodrama  
> in his private sanitarium, initially known as Beacon Hill, using  
> what he had learned from his Stegreiftheatre of the early 1920's.  
> That the first students of psychodrama were mostly from the mental  
> health and counseling professions was only natural.
>
> An irony is that psychodrama has historically been relegated to the  
> fringes of mental health practice. Today, while recognizing the non- 
> clinical uses for psychodrama, and generally supportive of them,  
> most of the members of the psychodrama collective use the  
> therapeutic function of psychodrama only in a clinical setting.  
> Most importantly is the fact that psychodrama is generally and  
> widely defined as a method of psychotherapy or group psychotherapy  
> and the only process for certification in psychodrama underscores  
> this definition. Although the American Board of Examiners in  
> Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy allows for  
> certification by individuals who do not possess the credentials to  
> practice psychotherapy, anyone without a masters degree in one of  
> the mental health or counseling professions is required to complete  
> course work at the graduate level in the core curriculum of those  
> professions from which psychotherapists come! The message is clear.  
> One must have the education of a psychotherapist to achieve  
> official sanction to practice psychodrama.
>
> It is time, perhaps long past time to make some changes. Let’s  
> begin by considering psychodrama, not as a method of psychotherapy,  
> but as a method of communication. It is not only a method of  
> interpersonal communication but also of self-communication. By this  
> I mean that psychodrama can be regarded as an extended or expanded  
> form of self-reflection in which one subjectively examines one’s  
> experiences, ponders the meanings of experiences, explores how and  
> why they happened, and in general tries to make sense out of the  
> apparent nonsense or mysteries of life. By externalizing and giving  
> objective existence to the subjective, psychodrama greatly  
> facilitates this process.
>
> Therefore I propose that we re-adopt Moreno’s definition of  
> psychodrama as "the science of exploring the truth through dramatic  
> action," and look at it as a method of communication which has a  
> number of functions, one of which is psychotherapy.
>
> The American Board of Examiners in Psychodrama, Sociometry and  
> Group Psychotherapy has been in existence for over 32 years. From  
> the time that the Board gave its first examination, the only  
> changes the Board has made in its ways of doing business have been  
> to increase bureaucracy, paperwork and redundancy. I have yet to  
> meet a trainer or an applicant who has not reported being greatly  
> put off (or perhaps put upon) by the certification process. The  
> Board has sometimes had difficulty in finding people willing to  
> serve upon it. Is it possible that some sort of change is long  
> overdue?
>
> What follows is a suggestion for a radical revision of the  
> psychodrama certification process.
>
> - Requirements for certification; - Education; - Current  
> requirement is "a masters degree from an accredited university..."
>
> Proposed: There is probably no need for a formal education  
> requirement for certification in psychodrama. I have trained a  
> number of people who haven’t had a college degree, some of whom are  
> quite competent at directing psychodrama, and some of whom later  
> achieved a masters degree2 and have become certified. Jonathon  
> Moreno was a good director at age 11, and served on the staff of  
> the Moreno Institute when he was 17 or 18 years old.
>
> I suspect that the masters degree was originally established  
> because the originators of the certification process had in mind  
> certification for psychotherapists and counselors. Here a masters  
> degree makes sense but is unnecessary because state laws regulate  
> who can and cannot practice psychotherapy or counseling. The Board  
> of Examiners doesn’t have to worry about it. Eliminating the  
> education requirement would open the certification process to  
> people like substance abuse counselors who have "come up through  
> the rank," who have learned by having successfully gone through  
> substance abuse programs. It would also make eligible teachers and  
> others in non-clinical fields.
>
> - Post-graduate education for applicants without degrees in  
> clinical fields.
>
> Having read the above you can guess that I am for eliminating this  
> requirement. For the past dozen years I have trained a fairly large  
> number of lawyers in the psychodramatic method. They seem to learn  
> much faster than the many people in the mental health fields whom I  
> have also trained. I am reluctant to say that they learn faster  
> because they haven’t been trained in one of the conventional mental  
> health fields but I believe that a case could be made that in our  
> traditional training we are taught to be overly cautious and we  
> carry that fear into our psychodrama training. A few of those  
> lawyers have trained with other TEP’s who verify that they have  
> attained a high level of competence–without the coursework required  
> for certification.
>
> - Training: Current requirements–780 hours of training.
>
> Hours has always seemed to be to be a lousy way to measure training  
> in psychodrama. Using hours makes several questionable assumptions:
>
> - One hour is the equivalent of every other hour. Comment: Everyone  
> who has been trained or who has trained knows that there are  
> moments of great learning and moments of boredom in the course of  
> training.
>
> - All trainees start at the same place. Comment: Some trainees have  
> a natural talent for learning the psychodramatic method. A few will  
> never ever make it.
>
> - Seven hundred eighty hours is a magic number. Comment: Some  
> people in training display considerable competence well before they  
> have accomplished 780 hours of training; others require far more to  
> reach the level commensurate with being certified.
>
> (I have always been dismayed when I hear people in training  
> comparing hours or making decisions based on the number of hours  
> they may gain by attending this or that program. By setting such  
> standards the Board encourages the accumulation of hours when the  
> trainee should be concerned with becoming more competent. That  
> being said, I do not have any suggestions for replacing this  
> standard with a better one. I hope someone, somewhere does have.)
>
> Professional practice
>
> It is in this section of the requirements for certification that  
> the Board makes it clear that it is only considering the clinical  
> psychodramatist as an applicant for certification. As a matter of  
> fact, one of the first executive directors of the Board  
> consistently referred to the C.P. as "Clinical Practitioner,"  
> despite numerous corrections by one of the Board Directors.3
>
> The rules for supervised experience also demonstrate the arbitrary  
> rigidity that the Board has developed over the years.
>
> The supervised experience requirement calls for the trainee to  
> conduct 80 sessions of psychodrama over a 52 week (approximately  
> one year) period, under supervision.
>
> One of my trainees had conducted 80 sessions under my supervision  
> in approximately 9 months.
>
> When we submitted the supervised experience form, which called for  
> beginning and end dates for the supervised experience, it was  
> rejected because the dates comprised less than a year. We had to re- 
> submit the form after changing the ending date to match the  
> beginning date plus one year. That strikes me as the ultimate in  
> bureaucratic idiocy for which there should be no place in the  
> spontaneity methods.
>
> While I think it is fine to define the supervised experience as a  
> number of sessions, setting a minimum time period in which they are  
> to be accomplished strikes me as unnecessary if not ridiculous.
>
> Supervision: The rule calls for 40 supervision sessions of at least  
> 50 minutes each to cover the 80 sessions of experience.
>
> The stupidity here is again measuring an existential entity by  
> clock hours. Because I have frequently been in the position of  
> supervising students at a distance which precludes frequent vis a  
> vis supervision, I have had to supervise via telephone. The most  
> important supervision–i.e., when the student gains the most value– 
> has been calls, often with high anxiety immediately after a session  
> in which the trainee has an important question about something he/ 
> she has just done in the session and about which the student has a  
> serious question. The ten or fifteen minutes in discussing the  
> student’s intervention and the reasons why it was appropriate or  
> inappropriate, perhaps what the student needs to do, are far more  
> valuable than 50 minutes of listening to a student tediously  
> describe the whole session. The Board absolutely needs to allow and  
> trust the trainer to supervise in the trainer’s own style.  
> Inadequate supervised experience will show up in the onsite  
> examination.
>
> Professional activities–although desirable, this requirement is too  
> vague and imprecise to be of any value. It serves simply to arouse  
> anxiety in the applicant.
>
> Endorsements of competency: My quarrel here is largely with the  
> paperwork. To begin with the endorsement forms require both  
> applicant and endorser to enter the names of both applicant and  
> endorser on the same sheet of paper. Redundant? I think so.
>
> Next, the form requires the trainer to submit some narrative  
> description of the applicant. One thing called for is strengths and  
> weaknesses. Another calls for "anecdotal" descriptions of the  
> applicant. These are not only unnecessary and ridiculous  
> requirements but totally useless. No trainer is going to mention a  
> fatal flaw in the trainees performance in an endorsement for  
> certification, and anecdotal descriptions could well violate  
> confidentiality. The Board cannot utilize any such subjective  
> material in determining whether or not the student should be  
> admitted to the examination--without running a great risk of  
> defending itself legally.
>
> There are only three things that the Board needs from the primary  
> trainer and only those three can be used to admit the applicant to  
> the examination process. They are:
>
> 1. The trainer is convinced that the applicant has reached a level  
> of competence which is commensurate with that of a certified  
> practitioner.
>
> 2. Verification of the applicant’s training experience.
>
> 3. Verification of supervised experience.
>
> Once the trainer submits those three statements, the Board must  
> admit the student to the examination. No other information is  
> relevant, pertinent, or operational.
>
> Examination
>
> Here is where the radical revision truly begins. The Board  
> currently requires a written examination covering seven areas.
>
> The first and least radical suggestion is to drop the areas of  
> research and related fields. Neither are pertinent to the practice  
> of psychodrama. The vast majority of practicing psychodramatists,  
> clinical or non-clinical, do not come from a research oriented  
> discipline. While the field of psychodrama could well use a vast  
> number of decent research studies, the practitioners are not the  
> ones who are likely to do it. Besides, certification is for  
> practitioners, not researchers.
>
> Likewise, it makes no sense to require that applicants for  
> certification be versant in so-called "related fields." This has  
> meant related methods of psychotherapy. The Board is certifying  
> psychodramatists, not gestalt therapists, or transactional  
> analysts. We should be examining only on the relevant method.
>
> Now here is where my suggestions get really radical. So hang on to  
> your seat until we get through this. First a disclaimer. The  
> following is a seed of an idea. There are significant problems with  
> it (although probably no more than with the present procedure.)
>
> Scrap the written test. Do away with it. No more anxious nights  
> rummaging through all the previous tests, wondering "will they ask  
> THAT one again?" No more making copies of each section for each  
> test taker, sending them out to readers to read. No more reading a  
> couple dozen offerings of history of psychodrama. Do away with it.
>
> Next we borrow a page from the speciality examinations of other  
> professions:
>
> The Board appoints several examining committees composed of perhaps  
> three TEP’s. Each committee meets at a specific time and location,  
> the location a place central to a number of applicants.
>
> A group is recruited. How is one of the issues that need to be  
> worked out. One possibility is to conduct some examinations in  
> conjunction with the annual meeting. Some years ago the annual  
> conference featured the "perpetual theatre of psychodrama," in  
> which a number of directors in succession ran sessions throughout  
> the day. It was often well-attended and something similar could be  
> organized for the purposes of examination.
>
> The applicant runs a psychodrama session attended by the examining  
> committee.
>
> The committee meets with the applicant to process and discuss the  
> session that the applicant has just directed.
>
> The committee conducts an oral examination in place of the written  
> one.
>
> The advantages:
>
> - This process is far more slicker and quicker than the one in  
> place in which applicants wait months to learn the outcome of the  
> written examination.
>
> - Examinations can be conducted several times a year instead of once.
>
> - The interaction between committee and applicant will yield a much  
> greater and more accurate assessment of the applicants  
> sophistication regarding the Morenean methods than any written  
> examination.
>
> - The committee should have the trust of the Board sufficient to  
> inform the applicant on the spot or within a day or two if the  
> applicant has been successful.
>
> - With careful organization, this may be a less expensive process  
> than the current one.
>
> I am sending this to all the participants of the pre-conference  
> workshop on non-clinical psychodrama. I would really appreciate  
> responses. Tell me if you think it is a whacked-out idea if that is  
> what you really think. Make suggestions for how to improve the  
> basic idea. Or take a swing at your ideas on how to make a more  
> user-friendly certification process.
>
> Isn’t it time to re-vamp the current mess and make it more  
> accessible to non-clinical psychodramatists?   -- John Nolte
>
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