New book in Hungarian

Tue May 13 09:09:31 CDT 2008

 Dr. Vikár András in Hungary has just published another book on psychodrama. Enclosed is his photo and cover of the book.

Vikár, András (2007). Psychodrama the Serious Game: Individual Processes in the Group-Group Processes in the individual.  Budapest: Medicina. (In Hungarian).  Cost: @10 Euros; 200 pages. Publisher's website: www.medicinakiado.hu   other information: www.pszichodrama.hu   

         Dr. Vikar is a physician specializing in psychiatry and pediatrics, as well as a PhD psychotherapist and psychodramatist in Hungary.

Summary of the book:
My first encounter with psychodrama took place in 1976 and it was two years later, in 1978, that I finished my psychodrama group training with Professor Ferenc Mérei. Since then I have been leading psychodrama groups even though, in addition, I also took part on several other shorter or longer workshops and trainings, like a three-year-long process, e.g., a Moreno type protagonist centered psychodrama, or a few weeks long process, e.g., French analytical psychodrama.

While the present thesis is primarily based on personal experience, it also contains a textual analysis, intended for a comparison of different psychotherapeutic methods, of the word-for-word protocol of a two-hundred-hour-long self-knowledge group therapy, as well as a sociometrical research.

In my thesis, I treat different methods of psychodrama, seemingly incompatible and self-contained, in a coherent theoretical system. I bring them in harmony with modern psychotherapeutic models and new results of psychotherapeutic research. Revisiting the special history of Hungarian psychodrama, and its relation to the way of thinking in the Budapest Analytical School, proved to be of great help in this integrative theorizing process. It is thus that both group processes and individual processes can get into focus. Also, it was with the help of this integrative thinking that I managed to work out the group-centered approach to child and adolescent psychodrama, by bringing it into harmony with our knowledge of evolutionism, and finally the "monodrama with crew" method as complementary to the individual therapeutic processes-an effective treatment of early narcissistic disturbances.

This integrative theoretical approach made it necessary to reconsider well-known psychodrama techniques, now reinterpreting them, now changing emphases. Let me only highlight the significance of spatial arrangement, the warming-up and other group games, the mirroring and, the perhaps most important question of theoretical approach, the simultaneous treatment of different levels.

My theoretical approach is supported by a computer-based textual analysis of one of my groups and the completed sociometric examination. Regression, as a vital element of successful therapy, is given particular emphasis in my approach. The textual analysis seems to support this, too. 

The protagonist is continually in the center of his/her world while on the stage of psychodrama. He/she can get in touch with every role, whether it is real or not, or whether it is an object or an evoked feeling and they have a reciprocal influence on one another. The scene changes, the protagonist changes it while experiencing his/her own activity even on a physical level. He/She can be sure that he/she would receive help; after all there is the group, the leader, as well as the whole arsenal of psychodrama. The more he/she can give himself/herself up to the situation, the more he/she can rely on help. It is not difficult for the actors around the protagonist to participate in any situation, even playing a negative role, in compliance with his/her needs. Not consciously, but due to the "tele" and transfer processes, they were selected to their roles so that their personality, their own conflicts and the momentary sociometric and group dynamic situation could evolve in the assigned role. Those members of the group that do not play but rather only form an audience represent the group itself. They are the point of reference because of their being the "outside world" and also possessing motherly function. In Mihály Bálint's words, they represent "primary love," full acceptance within, at least, the therapeutic framework. This is the necessary condition for the protagonist to be able to abandon himself/herself to the situation, to be able to get into a regressive state where he is able to recover his/her original spontaneity. Now it is time for a new beginning...

Psychodrama methodology is especially suitable for providing the necessary requirements of this "new beginning." The most important evolutionary approaches, whether we are thinking of a sectioned and gradual development or whether we are thinking of a continual, overlapping evolutionary process, the interactive effects between the individual and the environment play a vital role. The observations during the 1980s on the early baby/child-mother relationship evidence the active role played by the baby in these interactions. It is through successful interactions that he/she can experience his/her own competence and acceptability. And so can he become an organic and accepted part of the social micro-milieu. Building on his/her original spontaneity he/she can now discover the efficient behavior and set of roles that guarantee the fulfillment of his/her needs while staying in harmony with the environment. During the process, the protagonist interiorized his picture of the world, which, on its turn plays a corrective role from within. The group situation in psychodrama provides the micro-social environment, whereas the method and the game makes it possible to quickly get into the early regressive state, the simultaneous presence of preverbal and verbal levels, and the possibility of their getting into focus. The dynamic processes within the group, interpersonal events, which can be discovered in the full and transfer processes and in the changes within the sociometrical situation, show full synchronicity with the intra-psychic processes in individuals, in accordance with the above-sketched evolutionary considerations. The comprehensive treatment of different levels, which I have sketched out here, is responsible for the therapeutic influence that is the correction experience necessary for any real change. 

The processes that take place in the group are exactly as important for the individual as are the individual processes for the group.
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