The workshop I will be running for counsellors and therapists this year has gone up on the CITP website. It is run under the auspices of the Psychodrama training institute, and I’m pleased that this workshop I ran for the first time in Blenheim in November has a niche in the psychodrama setting.
I will also be doing a 3 hr workshop at the Brisbane ANZPA Psychodrama Conference this month.
Details of the July Christchurch workshop follow:
The unconscious is a slippery idea by its very nature, if we become gradually more aware of our own dynamics, more conscious then we realise that there was stuff going on unconsciously before. I recall the day, for example, when I realised my mountaineering was associated with escape from social difficulty, originally in the family. Moreno talks of the unconscious all the time, though he belittles the idea occasionally and claims he surpassed it with the notion of warm up.
“The unconscious lives on as a by product of the warming up process.” Who Shall Survive? page liv.
“The antiquated couch was transformed into a multi-dimensional stage, giving space and freedom for spontaneity, freedom for the body and for bodily contact, freedom of movement, action and interaction. Free association was replaced by psychodramatic production and audience participation, by action dynamics and dynamics of the groups and masses.
With these changes in the research and therapeutic operation the framework of psychoanalytic concepts, sexuality, unconscious, transference, resistance and sublimation was replaced by a new, psychodramatic and sociodynamic set of concepts, the spontaneity, the warming up process, the tele, the interaction dynamics and the creativity. These three transformations in vehicle, form and concept, however, transcended but did not eliminate the useful part of the psychoanalytic contribution. The couch is still in the stage – which is like a multiple of couches of many dimensions, vertical, horizontal and depth – sexuality is still in spontaneity, the unconscious is still the warming up process, transference is still in the tele; there is one phenomenon, productivity-creativity, for which psychoanalysis has given us no counterpart.” Who Shall Survive? page 120
In Psychodrama Volume 1 Moreno is quite happy to use the word unconscious again, especially when seen as co created in what he terms “intimate ensembles”:
See the full quote here
Therapy can make the unconscious conscious. In the same way, in couple therapy the repeating patterns the couple enact are revealed. The formerly unconscious becomes conscious. For example, a classic role description used in Imago therapy is the hailstorm and the turtle. The more one partner storms the more the other hides in their shell. Such dynamics are well understood by therapists but the couple may be totally oblivious to this co-created dynamic. To really see it in action and to reverse that cycle both parties need to be present.
Here is the section on warm up from my paper: The Group and its Protagonist.
The occasion is that I am thinking about warm up in the context of couple therapy, and warm up to dialogue. Following the quote is translation of this section to apply it to couple therapy.
BIPERSONAL PSYCHODRAMA: ITS TECHNIQUES, THERAPISTS, AND CLIENTS
By ROSA CUKIER available here:
Soi far I’ve read the first few chapters and she has an excellent description of various perspectives on Psychodrama au deux. (as I prefer to call it. I had a thin blue book with that title, where is that?)
YouTube audio
The rest of the audio can be purchased here.
Am I responsible for everything if I’m God?
Partner in its creation
I must have been in the beginning
I created myself
Mirroring is a word used in both the Psychodrama and Imago modalities. In a classic psychodrama the protagonist returns to the audience and is companioned by the conductor of the drama, who instructs the auxiliary egos to re-enact the scene. This can be done for a variety of reasons. One is to reveal to the protagonist how their actions look from another perspective. Another reason might be at the end of a drama or role training session for the protagonist to see the new development in their being. The mirroring in the Imago sense shares these purposes though the form different.
I’m finding it helpful to think of two mirror positions.
1. Face to face
2. Spectator
Here is a quote from Moreno highlighting the spectator mode.
The technique of the mirror ‘portrays’ the body image and the unconscious of A at a distance from him so that he can see himself. The portrayal is done by an auxiliary ego, who has made a close study of A. … In the mirror technique the protagonist is a spectator, an onlooker, he looks at the psychological mirror and sees himself. Fig 4(Moreno, J.L., 1959, p. 53).
Here is an example from Peter Kellerman:
“.. Bob presented a scene in which he quarreled with his wife. He stated his case and argued that she did not pay enough attention to him and neglected his needs. A woman in the role of his wife presented the other side of the story, throwing fuel on the already overheated marital conflict. And so it went on in what seemed to be an endless battle of words and accusations. The director used the mirror technique in an effort to break the deadock. He asked Bob to step out of the scene and watch it all from the outside (as if in a mirror), with another man playing the role of himself.
Watching the fight as a spectator, Bob listened carefully to both partners. ” Page 92
Peter Kellerman also gives an example of mirror that is face to face.
“A group member to another: When I meet you, I feel enriched. Because you look at me from another perspective. Page 92
The purpose of mirroring
I can see two broad, slightly different purposes of mirroring.
1. Revelation
2. Validation
The first is so the person can see themselves either from a new perspective or how others see them. The second is to assist the person to have a sense of being seen and understood,and having value.
Both types have an existential quality, the person will get a sense they exist.
Mirroring becomes a very broad category we think of the whole field. As the term is used in all these ways within psychodrama and in other modalities I think it is useful to be able to distinguish the various processes that are called mirroring. Most examples of mirroring would fit into one of the following four combinations of form and purpose.
| Face to face | Spectator | |
|---|---|---|
| Validation | ||
| Revelation |
I completed this psychodrama thesis in 1999 after working on it one way and another since about 1984. One feature of this paper is the discussion about the sociometric matrix, a notion that influences my ideas about cyberspace as well and were at the root of another essay I wrote – Archetypes of Cyberspace
I stumbled across this better pdf version of the The Group and its Protagonist – linked to it on my Writing page.
I’m wonering if there is some way to publish something based on these papers?
Quotes from Moren follow:
A series of quotes follow
The pattern of role relations around an individual as their focus is called his cultural atom. Every individual, just as he has a set of friends and a set of enemies, – a social atom – also has a range of roles facing a range of counter-roles.
Psychodrama v. 1 p. 84
The interpsyche occurs then when the role cluster of a couple is particularly intertwined. Love. Upon investigation I imagine there would be a particular quality to the role relationships. The tele would be strong at least in some areas. The tele with the roles passed though the original social atom of each party would be strong. The mutual and positive/negative matches would outweigh the neutral?
This is a psychodramatic look at what Harville Hendrix calls the Imago. Sociometrically it can be explored in great depth.
More moreno quotes follow on the cultural atom