Walter Logeman: Journal
On the back burner I have a study / paper I want to do: Varieties of Encounter, today I was delighted to read a snippet from Elizabeth Synnot’s Thesis. The delight is there too because I want to bring forth dialogue, encounter in the training for the CITP
A SOCIODRAMATIST AT WORK
Producing Genuine and Reciprocal Relating
to
Create a Leadership Renaissance
September 2005
A quote follows from her thesis available on the ANZPA site
I’m motivated about theatre after todays experience is Second Life, both because of it being a Theatre par excellence AND because our host Kim had such an exciting deep perspective about drama and education. Learning about Boal was a find, though it is more a case of finding something lost. I think I owned a copy of Theatre of the Oppressed at one time, having a brush with Paulo Friere in the early seventies. He spoke here just as we were setting up a school.
The motivation is not just an external thing, it has been on my mind as I prepare to train others in Psychodrama this year. Theatre is an essential component of Psychodrama – it is as much theatre as therapy, it is therapy because it is theatre… but we must go further than that. Psychodrama is not only “clinical Psychodrama” it includes applications on the world, good theatre can transform the world.
I don’t like the line he has below, though the last thing I really want is a debate, I love the spirit of all this,
“it is a rehearsal for the revolution”
The reason I don’t like that in therapy is more obvious. It is possible in surplus reality to scream, shout, and annihilate whole planets, to do what you will. This only works if people are stable enough to see this as NOT a rehearsal.
So what is it?
Transformation, making things possible in the world.
So, when it comes to Sociodrama, that too might be a way of transformation, making things possible in the world.
Theatre guru Augusto Boal: “As workshop leader, I am merely an instrument”
February 2008 –“I always fiercely opposed our government, but that is over now. Gilberto Gil is an excellent Minister of Culture. The Minister of Justice recently announced that cultural centres will be established in two hundred Brazilian cities. That is fantastic, because I know this is not an empty promise. It feels like a reward for our years of work.”
Augusto Boal
Augusto Boal (Rio de Janeiro, 1931) wrote his first book, Teatro del oprimido (Theatre of the Oppressed), in 1975. His philosophy has attracted followers under that name throughout the world. “The audience holds a general rehearsal for what happens in daily life. Key concepts are human development and freedom. The theatre shows us new roles. In essence, these roles are ready and waiting for the time when the viewer actually needs them. The theatre itself is not revolutionary: it is a rehearsal for the revolution.”
While tidying up my cupboards I found a sheet of info from my Social Work training in the early 80s. I have OCRed it and it appears below. It is one of the best things I got from the Social Work training. SYSTEMS.
Systems Approach to Social Networks
The conceptualisation of the human body into systems e.g. digestive systems circulatory system, autonomic nervous system assists in the treatment of individual people. Social work is developing system concepts which can assist in the treatment of social problems.
The system concept used in the management of cases includes the following four systems:
CHANGE AGENT SYSTEM.
The initiators of planned change. Usually .kis unit, but at times other agencies – e.g. Child and Family Guidance Centre.THE CLIENT SYSTEM,
The individual, family or group-that is the expected
beneficiary of the change.ACTION’ SYSTEM
The various people that effect the change – this
can of course include the client or the chance agent but also any other avalilable.resources.TARGET SYSTEM.
The people or groups that need to be changed in order to achieve the goals.It is important to note.that in one “case” there may be a variety of goals and that for EACH goal there will be a different content in each system.
E.G.
A patient may wish to improve her relationship with her
husband – (goal 1). She may wish to have her children back
from a foster placement (goal 2). Each of these goals may
have quite different TARGET, ACTION, CLIENT systems.
Note: that each goal is contracted with the client and social worker
and must be acceptable to bothSocial Work Practice
Model & Method
Pincus & Minahan., Peacock Pub. 1975.
I am intrigued by the parallel between the physics of particles/waves that change depending on the observer, and the psychotherapy process.
Once an observer is introduced we change the nature of the psychotherapy. The very stuff we grapple with in a diad, trust, engagement, transference are impacted in many ways if there is a third party observer. All the relationship stuff of the psychotherapy would be present with the observer as well. In addition what happens to the unconscious processes as a result of the invitation, allowed by the therapist, on the work with the therapist?
In a brief conversation today with colleagues I noted two comments that I’d like to reflect on more.
“Even inside the group there are things we can’t see.” (A)
And the other…
“Deciding to LOOK at the process changes the group as well, even when the observers are all members.” (G)
~
It might be useful to see how these observations relate to Moreno’s “Rules” of sociometry, which is a form of research relying on practice based evidence. I’ll quote my summary of them.
- Participants are informed, ready, willing and able to participate.
- Participants in the group are “researchers”, and the leader is also a participant.
- Participation is done in action. Learning is experiential, it is learning by doing.
- There is acknowledgment of the difference between process dynamics and the manifest content. To quote Moreno: “there is a deep discrepancy between the official and the secret behaviour of members”. (1951:39) Moreno advocates that before any “social program” can be proposed, the director has to “take into account the actual constitution of the group.” (ibid)
- Rule of adequate motivation: “Every participant should feel about the experiment that it is in his (or her) own cause . . . that it is an opportunity for him (or her) to become an active agent in matters concerning his (or her) life situation.” (ibid)
- Rule of “gradual” inclusion of all extraneous criteria. Moreno speaks here of “the slow dialectic process of the sociometric experiment”.
References are to: Moreno, J. L., 1951, Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society . Beacon House, Beacon, New York. Page 31
I just bought & downloaded “The Concordance” as my friend Simon calls it.
THE WORDS OF JACOB LEVY MORENO:
Vocabulary of Quotations from Psychodrama,
Group Psychotherapy, Sociodrama and Sociometry
ROSA CUKIER
It is an index to some of Moreno’s main writing, handy!
It is often translated from the Portuguese or Spanish etc. Hence we get some interesting words.
This is the first passage quoted:
ABREACTION
… A variety of improvisation is often called “abreaction.”
Whereas improvisation has an esthetic aim and is characterized
by some degree of freedom, abreaction has no conscious esthetic
aim, it is unfroze and compulsory. Both have a low degree of
mental organization.
Theatre of Spontaneity p. 79
El Teatro de la Espontaneidad p. 141
Teatro da Espontaneidade p. 96
“unfroze and compulsory”, I love that.
I wonder what the original was, was that in German?
I imagine the idea is one that I think of as central to the psyche.
What emerges in states of spontaneity, a state of freedom, comes unbidden, autonomously from the self, from beyond the ego. Jung calls this the autonomous psyche. Feelings are like this, but whole ways of being, roles can emerge as well.
“How are you?”
There is no choice, you are who you are right now, in this moment… compulsory. Yet there is choice as to how to express that, how to be with that, how to transform that, unfroze.
… the ability to perceive difference is a crucial, perhaps a necessary prerequisite for spontaneity. I saw more clearly one of the purposes of the psychodramatic technique of mirroring, it allows information, potentially lost* to be maximised and responded to.
This is a quote from an article I wrote in 1987! My friend Don said he had something I wrote back then, he dug it out. Wonderful to see it. Thanks Don! I recognised it as something I had written, especially the typeface from my old Brother Golf Ball printer but that was about it, I recalled nothing of the content.
I quite like it though, and here is a link to the whole paper, now scanned and online.
An Interview with Zerka Moreno, TEP
Psychodrama & Life with J.L. Moreno
Is this sociometric?
Force field analysis is an influential development in the field of social science. It provides a framework for looking at the factors (forces) that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal (helping forces) or blocking movement toward a goal (hindering forces). The principle, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, organizational development, process management, and change management.
In my exploration of Moreno’s ideas on Methodology I have come across Action Research. Kurt Lewin’s name comes up again. I recall he had something else that was *like* Moreno, but not quite? Yes, Force Field analysis, (see next post). I wonder how connected it all is, and how useful? Or if it is important to see the specific Moreno aspects that might be overlooked? I imagine the ideas of wap and Maximum Voluntary participation might not be present. Will check out, and would be interested in comments from people who know!
Action research
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, searchAction research is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a “community of practice” to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices, and knowledge of the environments within which they practice.
Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term “action research” in about 1944, and it appears in his 1946 paper “Action Research and Minority Problems”. In that paper, he described action research as “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action”.
I am interested to get hold of the article by Philip Carter
And one by J Guntz
Comprehensive. Must get them to add my thesis!
This international bibliography of psychodrama is available to anyone with Internet access. It is the fruit of an attempt to compile an exhaustive list of citations of scientific works on psychodrama since its creation by J. L. Moreno. It now contains some 5,600 entries,
