Category: Psychodrama

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Role Systems

I’m a Propegator and a Stabeliser (re posting a post below for the sake of posterity, in the fear the original may go before my copy.   And a Facilitator… actually all of the roles apply to me.  I am posting this to integrate it with the psychodramatic approach to roles.  I have also been listening to an audio:

Richard

A description of the IFS model from his website is pasted below.

Conceptual Framework for Online Identity Roles � emergent by design:

August 4, 2010

tags: , , ,
by Venessa Miemis

I just wrapped up a final project for an aesthetics course this semester, the assignment being to create a �Database of the Self.� I chose to make the database as a representation of the roles we play in terms of how we interact with information online. The roles are overlaid on a panarchy, which shows a visualization of adaptive lifecycles. Though the evolution of every idea or meme won�t necessarily follow this specific path, (it may in fact be rhizomatic, with multiple feedback loops), this begins to flesh out what we become as nodes within an enmeshed series of networks.

The cycle can be thought to begin with the �Activators,� in the lower right side of image.

For an interactive version of the graphic, click here. (Thanks to @gavinkeech for transforming my sketches into the web page). Scroll over the icons for descriptions and traits of each role to pop out. Roles also listed below.

I found this to be an interesting exercise when thinking about the impact and influence we have on the web, and how information travels. For instance, when you RT something on Twitter, you�re fulfilling a �Propagator� function, when you�re introducing people or bridging information you�re a �Connector,� when you�re developing a new theory or model or practice, you are a �Pathfinder,� and so on. It�s a different way of thinking about our relationship with information � one that puts more control in the hands of the user verses just drowning in �information overload.� It�s also an interesting way to think about who to send information to when trying to plant seeds of information and spread ideas.

Thanks to @wildcat2030 for inspiration from Friendships in Hyperconnectivity mindmap and to @gavinkeech for visual design.

Activators are the catalysts of transformational change, manifesting new ideas.

  • traits: evolutionary creativity, novelty, experimentation, innovation, freedom, divergence

Pathfinders give meaning to information, illuminating a new direction to pursue.

  • traits: clarity, vision, inspiration, foresight, intuition

Facilitators create conditions for information to flow smoothly.

  • traits: coordination, positioning, reconfiguration

Enhancers add perspective and insight to what is already known.

  • traits: growth, resonance, supplementation

Connectors bridge structural holes and forge new pathways between information.

  • traits: adaptation, learning, unification

Propagators build momentum and accelerate the spread of information.

  • traits: mobilization, persuasion, diffusion

Amplifiers direct attention and awareness to information of potential value.

  • traits: evaluation, recognition of opportunity/risk, discernment

Assimilators show how information is implemented.

  • traits: synthesis, integration

Stabilizers maintain equilibrium and balance.

  • traits: sustainability, conservation

Disruptors draw attention to chaos and uncertainty, highlighting the potential for new growth.

  • traits: dissonance, entropy, degradation

<cycle repeats>

Observers & Scribes

  • Archivists, Spectators, Analysts, Advocates, Critics

From the IFS website:

Overview | The Center for Self Leadership:

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMSSM MODEL

The IFS Model views a person as containing an ecology of relatively discrete minds, each of which has valuable qualities and each of which is designed for, and wants to play a valuable role. (For the evolution of this theory and its relation to other theories of multiplicity, see below.) These minds, or parts, are forced out of their valuable roles, however, by life experiences that reorganize the system in unhealthy ways. A good analogy is an alcoholic family, in which the children are forced into protective and stereotypic roles (the scapegoat, mascot, lost child, and so on) by the extreme dynamics of their family. But these roles do not represent the essence of the children; on the contrary, once released from his or her role by intervention, each child can find interests and talents separate from the demands of the chaotic family. The same process seems to hold true for internal families — parts are forced into extreme roles by external circumstances, but they gladly transform into moderate, more functional roles once they see that the system can safely operate that way.

What circumstances force these parts into extreme and sometimes destructive roles? Trauma is one factor, but more often it is a person’s family of origin values and interactional patterns that create internal polarizations, which escalate over time and are played out in other relationships.  Object relations and self psychology have observed these processes. What is novel about IFS is its understanding of all levels of human organization — intrapsychic, family, and culture — through the same systemic principles, and its intervention at each level with the same ecological techniques.

Parts: Managers, Firefighters, and Exiles

Most clients have parts that try to keep them functional and safe — to maintain control of their inner and outer environments. They do this, for example, by keeping them from getting too close or dependent on others, by criticizing their appearance or their performance to make them look or act better, and by taking care of others’ needs rather than their own. These parts that are in protective, managerial roles are called managers. When a person has been severely or chronically hurt, humiliated, frightened, or shamed, certain parts carry emotions, memories, and sensations from those experiences. To keep these feelings out of consciousness, managers try to keep vulnerable, needy parts locked in inner closets. These incarcerated parts are known as exiles. Whenever one of the exiles is upset to the point that it floods the person or exposes him or her to being hurt again, the third group of parts rushes to douse the inner flames of feeling, earning them the name firefighters. Highly impulsive, they push for stimulation that will override or dissociate from the exile’s feelings. Bingeing on drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or work are common firefighter activities.

The Self

The aspect of the IFS Model that differentiates it most significantly from other models is the belief that, in addition to these parts, everyone is at their core a Self. The Self has leadership and healing qualities — perspective, confidence, compassion, and acceptance — crucial to our highest, most harmonious functioning. Even the most severely abused, symptomatic clients have this healthy and healing Self, although many have very little access to it initially. The goal of IFS therapy is to differentiate this Self from the parts, thereby freeing its resources for healing by helping parts out of their extreme roles and guiding them into harmonious collaboration.

Unlike other approaches to psychotherapy, IFS has as its goal leadership by the Self of the client�s internal system of parts, and, in families, groups, and organizations, Self-leadership within each member. In contrast to other forms of psychotherapy, the IFS therapist does not have to teach clients how to correct the thoughts and emotions picked up by parts through their experiences. When clients are led by their Selves, they know, through internal communication, how to help each inner personality, what those parts need in order to feel safe, and how they can release their burdens. Led by the qualities of the Self, clients know how to provide what the parts need. The therapist�s job is to guide clients to a Self-led state in which they become therapists to their own inner families.

In interpersonal relationships, when the therapist can help family members get their parts to step back and let their Selves communicate, long-standing issues are resolved with a minimum of guidance. Rather than reacting to each other’s extreme views and positions, each Self-led person, sensing the hurt behind the protective walls of other�s parts, automatically feels empathy, just as individual clients feel for their own parts. It is the Self�s compassionate understanding of the parts� pain and shame, as well as the Self�s availability to assist the parts again and again, that is healing.

You can learn more about the Internal Family Systems Model and how to work with it in the Level 1 course in Internal Family Systems. Books, articles, and DVDs/CDs about IFS are available through the CSL Store.

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Fourth Wall

I recently learned this bit of theatre jargon.  Psychodrama obliterates the fourth wall, and at the same time totally makes the distinction between audience and stage.

Fourth wall – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The fourth wall is the imaginary “wall” at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.[1][2] The idea of the fourth wall was made explicit by Denis Diderot and spread in nineteenth century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism,[3] which extended the idea to the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience.

The presence of the fourth wall is an established convention of fiction and drama, which has led some artists to draw direct attention to it for dramatic or comedic effect. When this boundary is “broken”, for example by an actor onstage speaking to the audience directly, or doing the same through the camera in a film or television program, it is called “breaking the fourth wall.”[1][4]

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There is no such thing as a person

Winnicott famously said “there is no such thing as a baby.” (reference?) meaning of course there is always a baby and someone. Jacob Moreno’s notion of a social and cultural atom (reference?) is similar and more startling. There is a minimum set of roles (interactions) that need to be present for survival. In other words there is no such thing as a mother either, there is always a mother and a father (absent or not). The reference to role systems and dynamics is important here. We are not talking about people but relationships and ways of relating. People who don’t do anything are dead. Primacy of the relationship is not an uncommon idea in psychotherapy, even when the word ‘object’ is used in some schools of therapy, it is the ‘object relations’ that are important. For all that it is a big mind-shift to go from the every-day world of things and entities into the psychological world of dynamics.

The physical body, physical reality, so easily belies psychologically potent reality. Psychodrama has the power to reveal all the subtle bodies usually invisible, the use of the term surplus reality facilitates this. But even in psychodrama the mind-shift can be hard to make. Imagine a group of people, with their bodies invisible, see them as three dimensional movie programs of archetypal dramas, developmental processes and graphical depictions of experience of ecstasy & trauma in the cellular memory. The current state of warm-up is the movie that is playing right now. At any moment other movies could grab the screen, all the programs are networked. The body does not betray the soul, but it can fool us into thinking there is no soul. No wonder we have the idea of the eternal soul, it is collective, unconscious and interconnected back to the big bang.

The implications for psychotherapy are well known but difficult to fully implement. One potent central idea, is that the therapeutic relationship is the source of healing. Even that one, well established idea, standard in most definitions of psychotherapy, is always under threat by talk of dependency, measurable evidence, behaviour, genes, chemicals, brains. And of course the demand for reports and videos introduce more elements into the relationship. The third eye kills the dyad and creates a group. This may not be a bad thing if it were consciously embraced. If we said there is no such thing as a dyad, however it often advocated that the third presence should be ignored. “After a while we forget there is a video camera in the room.” Denial of surplus reality. In the face of all these onslaughts psychotherapy has survived, and the healing power of relationship is constantly experienced and valued.

Social atom repair is the essence of therapy. In therapy all too often people warm-up to working on the relationship with the mother, and then later the father. As a psychodramatist I work, even in one-to-one settings with the idea of repairing the social atom. Whatever the medical mental health diagnosis people come with, it is, at the the core ,relationship difficulties. DSM style diagnosis are always blind to the psychological as they are totally fooled by and perpetuates the idea individual people. Those difficulties are present in the parental dyad in some form. An investigation of the role system in the parental dyad often sheds light on the current relationships. The most successful work I have done is where the “parents” enacted by the client, come to relationship psychotherapy. The client then, in the regressed state of the child, experiences their renewed parents. A new social and cultural atom is available to them.

This is similar to the TA idea or “re-parenting the parent”,  but taken to a relational level.

Couple therapy, working directly with a relationship follows from the fundamental idea of a dynamic psyche. Yet therapists often talk of individual work as needed for a healthy relationship. Harville Hendrix’s Imago therapy, and Moreno and psychodrama before it, as well as all forms of family therapy with a systemic approach are more in tune with the psychological reality. Making the ‘imago’, the unconscious images operating in the relationship, the unit of therapy is a major breakthrough in psychotherapy. Hendrix’s phrase “The purpose of marriage is to heal childhood wounds.” (reference?) is profound. If we, in the psychotherapy field, embraced this we would use the healing potential in the couple relationship rather than the therapeutic relationship for psychological repair far more than we do.

Individuals are a myth. What is significant is ‘surplus’ to the physical entities, it is imaginal, relational and systemic.

❋

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Adequacy

This is a word used in psychodrama circles. Used to describe roles. They can be

  • absent
  • embryonic – is a word used on occasions
  • underdeveloped
  • overdeveloped
  • conflicted

or

  • adequate

Adequacy is in the psychodrama domain is the pinnacle of performance – there is nothing more needed. It is not faint praise, as if a schoolteacher looking at an essay using the word might use it to mean. I’ll pass it but only barely.

The word is also used in the definition of spontaneity.

“An adequate response to a new situation.”

~

I am reflecting on this word that I have come to appreciate. I like the humble tone. The implicit belief that adequacy is enough. Adequacy echoes the idea in other modalities of “good enough”. The delight of “adequate” is that there is no more required. Adequacy is fitting, nothing more is needed now.

But what is adequate in a new situation? Crying, running, fighting… who arbitrates these things?

Theory does not make sense on its own. Psychodrama theory requires a psychodrama context. Roles occur on a stage, one of the five instruments: Stage, director, auxiliary egos, protagonist and audience.

In such a context there is a warm-up, an enactment and sharing.

The enactment and protagonist emerge from the group. In an enactment there is never one role. The purpose of the endeavour is already defined and explicit. A warm-up may include a purpose and a yearning. Obstacles will be in the consciousness of the group. Adequacy is part of an outcome created collectively, and shared by the group. Adequacy is measured by applause, boos and hisses, laughter and tears.

And of course there will be new discoveries and new developments. After all the situation we have just seen on the stage is now an old one, demanding a new response. And the next time we meet what was adequate last time may be just a step towards the new.

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Outcomes in Small Group Process

My recent post: Can we Survive? is a draft for an item in a psychodrama publication. In that post I link Wisdom Councils and – Creative Insight Councils to the Sociometric methods of J.L. Moreno. The main idea is that there is a lager community and the small group resonates with the larger group in isomoprhic harmony, and can thus give back compelling insights and wisdom.

In this post I want to add a related idea.

From Dynamic Facilitation and the Wisdom Council theory I have got it clear that a small group can achieve something in addition to personal therapy for its members, and assist an organisation or community in developing its life, and in its decision making.

Jim Rough calls it “option creating”, I am not yet sure exactly what he means by this but it is not just a list of possibilities or wild ideas from a brainstorming session. The breakthrough in a group happens when there is an insight into a real option – something the whole group would like to see happen.

Such breakthroughs are possible over the longer time frame of a group, of diverse members, meeting for several days and sharing at a deep level. Traditional meetings can’t achieve this depth.

For a group to be of use to a larger community there needs to be a thorough warm-up before the event as to the purpose and context. While in psychodrama we are aware of the importance of the frame, I have not experienced a group in that tradition that has the focus of leading to outcomes for the whole community. In our organisations we tend to make decision in meetings, and while there is plenty of interaction and depth work, it is not specifically an clearly focussed on future actions. There may be specialist sub-committees, or work groups, but they tend to be by the people with special positions an ongoing positions within the organisation.

Imagine randomly selected diverse small group – from an organisation or community – doing depth work groups with the task of one or two of the following topics:

What is our strategic plan?
What is our vision?
Principles for the Constitution.
Who should be a member?

The group would present its findings to all members of the community or larger organisation and its governing in one a4 document, and 20 minute audio file at a special hui for the occasion.

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“Who Shall Survive?” Can we survive? Maybe.

War and climate change crisis are on my mind. I am cynical and despairing most of the time with respect to these issues, but I want to share thoughts that give me some hope! Maybe they will inspire you and us as a community.

How a small group can impact a large community!

Small groups, well facilitated have a level of insights to truth that is quite unlike what is common in community meetings or in parliaments and so on. Whatever mode of facilitation is used in a group, however the group is seated, whatever methods are used, small groups can access human depth. Often this is for personal development or training. There is always an important step that happens before a group meets. The group’s statement of purpose and scope is created. Who can attend the group. What its bounds of privacy are. What are the expected outcomes? This aspect of group design is vital!

The importance of the broad frame, and how innovative we can be in its creation came home to me through my interested in Wisdom Councils. These were developed by Jim Rough, who uses a method called Dynamic Facilitation. The purpose and frame of these groups is radically different from groups I am used to. The inner working of the group is familiar, but its context is profoundly different. He adds or emphasises some important dimensions that may not have been developed in the Morenian sphere of influence.

1. Microcosm and macrocosm

1. A group can be designed to be a microcosm of a larger community. Random selection from the larger group may be one way to achieve this. Note this is not representation, people are in small groups in their own right, authentically themselves. A small group, working for a longer time, in depth is working for the whole community. Not because the community has chosen them, or even know about them, but because of the principle of isomorphism between the part and the whole.

The small group carries the diversity of the whole within it. Resolutions in the small group are likely to be acceptable to the whole.

2. Purpose related to larger organisation.

The purpose of the group may be to present wisdom or insights to the larger community. The group may have a topic, in the pure Wisdom Council the topics arise from the group, when the group has a specific topic “Creative Insight Council” or CIC is used. Just how to relate the group to the larger community is part of the design of the group, and it would be clear in the purpose statement.

3. Planning the group in its context

Preparation of the larger community and its connection to the group is part of the design. Jim Rough has advocated that a Wisdom council be enshrined in the constitution, as a voice for “We the People”, and they can also be on a much smaller scale. A group could be formed by randomly selecting 12 willing participants from an organisation of 200 people. The group could have a specific topic for example: “How to best use available assets.” How to promote such an event, fund it, and host it is all part of the preparation and plan.

4. Presentation of the findings.

This needs to be clear from the start, so that privacy concerns are addressed and not breached. What is the plan for publication of groups breakthrough statements, if there are any? Follow up meetings where the group presents its insights? Web presence, during and after the event, is there a blog? Who can post? Twitter? Media involvement? Video, podcasts and movies?

Through my sociometric * eye it occurs to me that the whole of Jim’s work fits within the sociometric frame work. I am exited to think that all these matters are highly sociometric, and the Wisdom Council and CIC approach could well be a way in which the original sociometry as a form of scientific social investigation of working with society at large can be furthered. The ability to do create such a group for a larger whole needs to be part of a sociometrists ability.

The key understanding I have from this reflection on the relationship between Wisdom Councils and the groups we are used to in psychodramatic circles is that we can consciously identify the larger organisation as a group that is being served by a small intensive microcosm of itself. It is a group within a group. The small group’s work is to the larger community, as is the work of a protagonist in the small group. Isomorphy within systems is leveraged to work at great depth with groups that would otherwise have no voice.

Members of a wisdom council work authentically on their own concerns, they are not representatives, they need only present their own thoughts and feelings and act only in accordance with the dictates of their own heart. Systemic resonance between wholes and parts are already part of the sociometric systemic understandings we have and heightening that awareness and finding ways to make use of that would be a great step. Fits well with the theme of “Who Shall Survive?”

I am interested in how you see this as a form of sociometric work. Have you had experiences that bear on these ideas? How might we take this further in the community and in our own organisation?

Notes
*
From the ANZPA Training and Standards Manual:

Sociometrist
A sociometrist intervenes in social systems and organisations from a basis of research data provided by informal or formal sociometric surveys of groups. The interventions are usually directly related to organisational structure. The sociometrist makes use of abilities in research, negotiation, consultation and strategic planning, to relate to group structures in clinical, educational, community, industrial, commercial, political, economic, religious and international affairs. The purpose is to facilitate group task effectiveness and membership satisfaction.

Related Links:
Moreno’s “Who Shall Survive?”
Sociometry on Wikipedia
Wisdom Councils
Dynamic Facilitation
Diana Jones’ Sociometry page
Anne Hale’s Sociometry site

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Jung: Reciprocal Influence

Stumbled on this scrap: Jung wrote that

For two personalities to meet is like two different chemical substances: if there is any combination at all, both are transformed. In any effective psychological treatment the doctor is bound to influence the patient; but this influence can only take place if the patient has a reciprocal influence on the doctor. You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.

(C.G. Jung, CW, vol. 16, para. 163)

This is close to describing Moreno’s tele with the emphasis on reciprocity, ie a flow both ways.

Later:
Friday, 18 November, 2016

This is the relational paradigm in Jung, but as in so many psychotherapies it is thought of primarily in the therapeutic relationship. The obvious leap is to see that this reciprocity is present among people, in families, groups. The more significant the relationship the greater the power of transformation.

That there is a therapeutic quality in tele differentiates psychodrama from “individual therapy”.

More on this from Zerka.

See especially this post. It has the link to the section of Psychodrama Vol 1 that is relevant to this discussion.

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