Listserve question about Sharing

[Fred and/or Toni]

Dear Joel, Adam and ListServe,

In response to Joel's question about the Moreno story about sharing, here is a quote from The Quintessential Zerka: Writings by Zerka Toeman Moreno on Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy (p. 22).  For those who may not know, the book is a collection of most of Zerka's professional articles published in various journals and professional texts over the years.  Each article is prefaced by a comment from Zerka on what was going on in her own life at the time she wrote the article.  Many of these comments also include a glimpse of the growth of the psychodrama movement by one who lived it.  

The time during which this article was written [my note: "A Sociodramatic Audience Test,"  1945] was full and exciting.  We worked 17-18 hours a day, and it was stimulating all the time.  I was open and learning.  My small typing table stood at the end of J.L.'s desk and there was always something to explore, something to discuss, something to write.  

The audience tests and personal sharing, such as we mostly do today as the last phase of a psychodrama, developed simultaneously.  Once we discovered that people were willing to open up sociodramatically, we turned to the personal.  At open sessions the psychoanalyts were shocked at the sharing.  Of course, at the time this was just not done.  Moreno had observed that patients became confused by the interpretations of professionals of varied orientations.  When they were dispassionate towards a young woman patient, Moreno got upset and asked one of the psychiatrists, "Do you have children?  What is your relationship to your daughter?  Here we share our hearts, not our brains."  Moreno's vision had a global focus that many people still don't get -- psychodrama is shallow if it doesn't include a vision of the person's world.

I hope this sheds some light on the question.

Toni Horvatin
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