top of page
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHODRAMA
At times we all need to have encouragement and time to tell our truth about what happens in life; to risk looking at what didn’t happen, to uncover opportunities and to test alternatives. (Marcia Karp)
Psychodrama is an action method of group psychotherapy, developed by J.L.Moreno, born in Bucharest, Rumania in 1889. His family moved to Vienna when he was a child, and he qualified there as a doctor in medicine and psychiatry in 1917. As a young student he would sit in the parks of Vienna and watch children play.
He was fascinated by their spontaneity and creativity and innate capacity to heal themselves through role play. Initially he worked as a general physician with a particular interest in people’s emotional and social relationships. In 1921 he developed a project he called ‘das Stehgreiftheater’ (the theatre of spontaneity) and gradually developed his interest in the use of drama and social interaction as methods of psychotherapy.
In 1925 he emigrated to America and continued to develop psychodrama and group psychotherapy, opening his own private mental hospital in Beacon, New York in 1936. He laid claim to being first to do and use the terms group psychotherapy, psychodrama and encounter with its therapeutic meaning. He died in 1974 at the age of 85.
As a student he mentioned to Freud when asked what he was doing:’ I start where you leave off. You analyse peoples’ dreams. I try to give them the courage to dream again.’
Psychodrama can be described as a method of psychotherapy in which individuals enact the relevant events in their life instead of talking about them. It aims to create a therapeutic setting which uses life as a model to integrate into it all aspects of living, beginning with the universals – time, space, reality and cosmos, down to all details and nuances of life.
A psychodrama consists of five basic elements:
1) The protagonist - who is the focus of a psychodrama, being that member of the group to explore their personal issues in a particular session. The term ‘protagonist’ is taken from the Greek theatre, meaning ‘first actor’ or main character.
As protagonist, we are the ‘stars’ of our own psychodramas just as we are the starring characters of our own lives. The protagonist is asked to be himself, to portray his own private world. He is stimulated by the use of various psychodramatic techniques to help him to be what he is, more deeply and explicitly than he is in life.
2) The director – who in collaboration with the protagonist, directs and facilitates any individual drama. They have four functions:
1. Producer
2. Therapist
3. Analyst
4. Group Leader
3) The auxiliary egos – members of the group who are the arms of the director as they aid in their own way to bring the session to fruition. The auxiliary, playing the role of the significant other, is a moving force in the session.
They can increase the protagonist’s warm up to time, place and reality; intensify the action; help gather information; and in the reverse role, can exaggerate and mirror the protagonist. The auxiliary can represent values, virtues and morals as well as being the significant other.
4) The audience - in the session is not an audience in the inactive sense of being ‘viewers’ of the action, but functions as a miniature society – one where it is safe to play out one’s hopes, dreams, fears, realities.
The group has a double purpose. It may serve to help the protagonist, or being itself helped by the subject on the stage it becomes a client/protagonist, it is a sounding board of public opinion. It is important to have the presence of a group that is willing to accept and understand him/her.
5) The stage – in most cases simply a space in a room large enough to allow some physical movement, although at Beacon, Moreno built a more complex theatrical structure, which allowed the use of different stage levels in the enactment.
bottom of page