Walter Logeman: Journal
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?
A series of quotes follow
When does the interpsyche kick in?
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons,
Wise men never try.
I’ll be foolish enough to try. In group work the underlying dynamics do not take long to surface, and they can even be predicted, for example if a new person joins we can expect inclusion/exclusion dynamics. The interpsyche is co-created yet has a life of its own that the participants don’t have a lot os say in, the members participate but they bring their history with them, their baggage, their culture and there specific family cultures & dynamics.
When does the interpsyche kick in? It does not take much!
Interpsyches are complex varied and each different from the other. If it were a landscape how would it look?
How does this relate to the social and cultural atom?
You can see some of my cultural bagage below:
A dialogue is a lot like a therapeutic relationship. Perhaps it is ok that a marriage is therapeutic, but there is something strange about having your partner as a therapist. The Imago method has also been criticized for creating dependency. “People are responsible for themselves, for their own healing.” A common idea in our western culture.
The questioning I’m doing above is interesting as it leads me to see clearly that it is based on flawed thinking that is prevalent.
The relationship though healing and nurturing is nothing like counselling or therapy. One reason is that each party does all the relational tasks, there is no functional difference. Another is that the main thing a couple do is live life together, the working on the relationship is a small part of that.
The more troublesome flaw is the one about individual responsibility. It sounds good but it does not make sense. People need other people. Need. Typically to become fully individual, differentiated people enter therapeutic relationships to do that!
The sort of couple work I do with people has as its aim to be fully present and authentic, “differentiated”, fully alive without withdrawing or fusing. Without fight or flight or freezing. Interdependent collaborative work. It can take quite a bit of living to get there! Perhaps when you can do that it is enlightenment.
Here is a fuller quote of a section quoted earlier.
Marriage and family therapy for instance, has to be so conducted that the “interpsyche” of the entire group is re-enacted so that all their tele-relations, their co-conscious and co-unconscious states are brought to life. Co-conscious and co-unconscious states are by definition such states which the partners have experienced and produced jointly and which can therefore be only jointly reproduced or re-enacted. A co-conscious or a co-unconscious state can not be the property of one individual only. It is always a common property and cannot be reproduced but by a combined effort. If a re-enactment of such co-conscious or co-unconscious state is desired or necessary, that re-enactment has to take place with the help of all partners involved in the episode. The logical method of such re-enactment a deux is psychodrama. However great a genius of perception one partner of the ensemble might have, he or she can not produce that episode alone because they have in common their co-conscious and co-unconscious states which are the matrix from which they drew their inspiration and knowledge.
Psychodrama Volume 1, 4th edition, page vii
The idea that couple has a special place in the family system, or the social atom is somewhat obvious perhaps. Murray Bowen makes that claim (see quote below) but the implications go very deep into how we do psychotherapy. If it is the relationship that is central then it puts a new light on attachment. Not to deny the importance of the mother child bond, it is deeply influenced by the mother father bond (or absence of one. The child will have a relationship that mirrors their relationship wit mother. For many years I’ve concretised the parental relationship in individual therapy and this often has a big impact on the client. They can see how their sense of place and their relationships are all influenced by their place in that primary diad.
This quote is from Differentiation of Self in the Therapist’s Family of Origin by Philip Rich
Bowen considers the marital coalition, or the two spouses/parents, as comprising the essentials of the family core, and, accordingly, sees the therapist’s task as that of constituting a new triangle with the two primary family members and the therapist as its members.14 However, the basic principle in this method of psychotherapy requires that the therapist remain emotionally outside of the field of emotions that involves the spouses and, thus, to remain “detriangled.â€15 Bowen maintains that it is important that the therapist be a highly differentiated individual in order to remain an emotionally objective observer in the midst of an emotional system in turmoil, while at the same time relating intimately to key people in the system
Still thinking about the interpsyche – and found this passage from Zerka Moreno in the Psychodrama Network News from the American Society of group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama 2005 I now see the difference between empathy and doubling. Doubling in its conception includes the relationship, it is not the intuition of the therapist directly but the voice of the interpsyche – the relationship between two people.
But there is another, more important, aspect of McGaw’s presentation. When he speaks about how his doubling with a protagonist is so often correct, he interprets this as due to his intuitive ability. When pressed by Rogers to explain it more specifically while speaking of his own power in that respect, he refers to it as his “empathy.” Unfortunately, he overlooks the contribution to the process by the protagonist, as if it all comes out of the therapist’s psyche, that of a single mind. By unfortunate I mean that this is just the area of Moreno’s contribution, namely to have pointed out that it is the interaction between people – tele – resulting in the “inter-psyche,” the space between people, that is the foundation of his and our work. This observation, more than anything else McGaw speaks of, tells me he has not really grasped Moreno’s message. It is our emphasis on the moment, the here and now, the spontaneity of the protagonist, the interaction of minds, that distinguishes our own field from that of individual psychology, a lesson we must never overlook.
Zerka Moreno makes it so clear psychodrama is a relational not an individual method.
Recently while teaching doubling it was clear the person was trying to think what the other person was thinking. Close, but not quite it. I said… let yourself be him, become him, breathe like him, sit like him, look at the world through his eyes and then voice what comes up, you won’t be guessing, you don’t have a choice about what comes up.
The doubling was then noticeably different even though not always exactly right.
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Later: Saturday, 6 October, 2012
I’m now (post the Dan Wile workshop) thinking the phrase above, “you don’t have a choice about what comes up” is right, but not enough.
Many things will come up and it is useful to choose to voice those things that are progressive for the protagonist, such things as empathy for another person, declaring an inner struggle, claiming the validity of experience.
Judgement of others, blaming and self righteous anger may also come up. They could be ignored, but if they feature strongly they could be moderated with such phrases as: I know this is might not be easy for you to hear. I wish I had a way of expressing this more constructively. I have been sitting on this for a long time and my intention is to bring it out to improve the relationship.
Later: Sunday, 29 November 2015
…this is just the area of Moreno’s contribution, namely to have pointed out that it is the interaction between people – tele – resulting in the “inter-psyche,” the space between people, that is the foundation of his and our work.
This makes it so clear that Moreno had the relational paradigm, he did not call it that and he often slips into thinking of individuals, yet he is so instrumental in this as an influence on Buber and then Harville Hendrix and Hedy Schleifer.
Later, Monday, 30 October 2023
I’m not worried about the words empathy or doubling. What matters is that it comes from the “interpsyche” – the “interaction of minds” that distinguishes “our own field from that of individual psychology.”
Ok, so it is a case of 1 + 1 = 1. (the interpsyche)
How about 1 + 1 = 3, you, me and the relationship?
Its all a matter of degrees,
Throw in dialectics and emergent complexity.
Maybe add a bit of quantum.
Moreno would approve.
Be one with the other. That’s doubling. We say “doubling” when we mean becoming one.
In classic doubling the double stands slightly behind, follows the breathing and body posture. And the double looks where the protagonist looks. Or is the protagonist avoiding looking? The protagonist ( i.e. anybody) has a social and cultural atom – they are never alone. The stage may be empty – but in another, surplus, reality the stage is filled with entities. This is all there for the for the double/protagonist unity to explore.
Call it clairvoyance, tele-pathy, or by any name. We need many names as there are varieties of interpsychic experiences.
Consider this an encounter between a couple facing each other:
Partner 1: I imagine you might be feeling worried.
Partner 2: Yes, I’m scared that nothing will come of it…
P1: I see… you are scared.
P2: Yes I’m terrified to be honest.
P1: Terrified.
P2: Yes.
That may not look like magic but imagine a couple who never did this “I imagine…” thing. How baren that would be. That step of imagination initiates a process of entering the interpsyche.
This example is classic Imago, and they call it empathy.
*
To put these reflections in context, I looked for this post because I’ve offered to run a Theatre of Spontaneity session.
“The next Theatre of Spontaneity will be on Tuesday 7 November.
Walter will direct the evening on the theme of Empathy with a focus on empathy in organisations”
I was inspired to this by Dan who ran something like this on leadership.
What is this blog about? It might be all over the place but this picture shows how my filter works.
At the heart is a patch where there is a psychological, or soulful aesthetic, cyberspace phenomena that makes the world a better place.
In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific and unhelpful. “Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop an inquiry,” Baron-Cohen tells me. “‘This person did it because they’re evil’ – as if that were an explanation.”
That makes such sense to me. I really hated that book by the author of “The Road Less Traveled”, “People of the Lie” where he postulates some people as evil. Interestingly I noted that that author, forget his name right now, lacked empathy in his case studies of so called “evil” people. I think it was a case of him wanting to make his clinical work match some rather hidden fundamentalist doctrines about original sin.
I just read Maya’s three questions she asks before commencing relationship therapy.
How do they compare with Harville Hendrix’s ones we just heard in the Auckland workshop?
1. What do you want in this relationship when you finish with me?
2. What have you done to prevent this from happening? (You, not the other partner)
3. What has to be taken out? What has to be put in? What will you take out, put in?
If you have the power to make it this bad, you have the power to make it good.
This couple could be creative and take self responsibility”
Just compared them and you can see who taught her!!
Maya’s three questions : https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2009/three-relationship-questions/