Edward Schreiber, M.Ed., C.P. is in Rhode Island, and teaches and writes about theory and practice in psychodrama. He was the winner of the Neil Passariello Award in 2001.
Swapping 4 Lifesteps for 4 Codes.
http://www.morenoinstituteeast.org/philosophy.htmThe roots of psychodrama ? an interactive method meaning "psyche in action" ? come from 1912. It was then that Dr. J.L. Moreno, a young physician, gathered together a group of prostitutes in Vienna, Austria, to discuss their problems, health needs and concerns with each other.
Moreno expected that each woman would act as the "therapeutic agent" for the other women as they shared their common experiences; so began the birth of group psychotherapy and self help-groups.
http://www.souldrama.com/A psychodrama director begins a session through a "warming up" process in which he helps the group to select an issue and a protagonist or subject, the person around whose problems the group therapy session will revolve. The protagonist is asked to present themselves on their stage of life and to enact situations that are relevant to their problem. The session can be an issue in the past, the present, or their anticipation of a future problem.
The group present is not an audience as in a theatrical production. The group present is crucial to a psychodrama because all members are considered participants. Many members will participate actively at some point in the session as auxiliary egos to the protagonist playing such roles as parents, son, daughter, or spouse. However, even those who sit through a session without speaking are expected to be empathetic and identify with the protagonist and the problem being presented for their benefit and the protagonists.
There are generally three phases to a classic psychodrama session: The warmup, which involves members of the group tuning- in to each other's concerns and focusing on a protagonist and a problem. The heart of the session involves the role-playing portrayal of various key scenes and the use of various techniques necessary to reveal the problem and move toward its solution. And finally there is the sharing at the end of the session which involves an intensive examination by the director, the protagonist, and the group on the meaning of the session.
In the process, some of the methods utilized include: (l) "role-reversal," a method that enables protagonists to see themselves from another point of view; (2) "doubling," which can facilitate members of the group to participate by sharing their viewpoint with the protagonist; (3) "soliloquizing," a method that enables a protagonist to share their most intimate thoughts in a crucial situation in their life; (4) "future-projection," a method that presents the opportunity for the protagonist to project himself into his future life; and (4) "group-sharing," the significant process which enables members of the group to share their emotions and possible solutions they derived from the session.
http://www.lewyablonsky.com/psychothera ... erapy.htmlA Historical Chronology of
Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama
http://www.blatner.com/adam/pdntbk/hxgrprx.htmExcerpts:
1908-1911: Jacob L. Moreno began to experiment with creative drama with children in Vienna. 1912: Moreno organized the first self-help group, with the disadvantaged class of prostitutes in Vienna.
1922: Sigmund Freud speculated on group dynamics in his paper "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego."
1932: J. L. Moreno first coined the terms "group therapy" and "group psychotherapy" at a conference of the American Psychiatric Association in Philadelphia, after doing basic research on prison populations. (He was encouraged to do this work by William Alanson White.) Moreno's approach of truly interactional, group-centered methods was in contrast to earlier group methods that were often classes in mental health, taught by lecture and exhortation.
1936: Moreno opened Beacon Hill Sanitarium, a private psychiatric hospital about 60 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, with an attached psychodrama theater and facilities for training professionals. (This is also the year he became a naturalized citizen.)
1937: Alcoholics Anonymous, started a few years earlier in Akron, Ohio, was beginning to be recognized.
1949-1955: Maxwell Jones developed the concept of the '`therapeutic community" at the Social Rehabilitation Unit (later renamed Henderson Hospital) of the Belmont Hospital in Sutton, England. Around that time, Paul Sivadon in France pioneered the idea of open (unlocked) wards.
1958-1966: Frederick (Fritz) Perls, Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, Ralph Hefferline, and others developed Gestalt therapy in New York; it became popular after Fritz Perls moved to the Esalen Institute in California around 1966.
1963-1966: Marathon (time-extended) group therapy (mainly for personal growth); Frederick Stoller, George Bach, Elizabeth Mintz.
1963-1966: Michael Murphy and Richard Price organized Esalen Institute just south of Big Sur, California. It was the prototype of the "growth center," and hundreds sprouted up around the country (and some overseas) over the next decade. These centers became the focus of the human potential movement, which was a marriage of humanistic psychology and T-group methods.
1967: Will Schutz, at Esalen, combined many modes of therapy with the process of the basic encounter group psychodrama, bioenergetic analysis, sensory awakening, guided fantasy, and a variety of action techniques, many of which were ultimately based on Moreno's methods.
1967: Synanon "games" opened to the public as a form of encounter group in Santa Monica, a seaside suburb on the west side of Los Angeles. Synanon was started in 1958 as a drug abuse treatment center by Charles Diedrich. These games were just short of being violently confrontational, and some of this approach generalized to contaminate parts of the encounter group movement.
1968: Hindu gurus, swamis, and Eastern spiritual teachers and disciplines were becoming fashionable, in part stimulated by the support of the Beatles for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his system of transcendental meditation. The use of psychedelic agents added to metaphysical interest, and group therapies began integrating transpersonal issues.
