Dialogues and mirroring – Psychodrama and Imago

In an earlier post I tried to capture a thought I had about dialogues. I was pleased to know someone read it and emailed me to say they were a bit confused. No wonder, I just pour out something I think about late at night — when I should be fast asleep!

I will describe more clearly how I work with couples by unpacking what I think are important ideas in a snippet from the earlier post.

I like to distinguish the words of the initiator of the dialogue, the protagonist, from the response by the person who is listening, the receiver, who I encourage to think of themselves as an auxiliary.

The problem is that I’m using language from two psychotherapeutic modalities. I imagine this makes no sense to anyone really, as there are very few psychodramatists who are also Imago Relationship Therapists. Even to someone who has that background it is still a muddled sentence.

Let me start again. First I’ll use Imago terms and then I’ll describe the same work using psychodrama language.

Continue reading “Dialogues and mirroring – Psychodrama and Imago”

Validating Mirror and Evaluative Mirror

I have been reflecting on a while on what appears to be different uses of the term “mirroring’ in various psychotherapeutic modalities. It was useful to come across Peter Felix Kellermann’s distinction between two types of mirroring.

Validating Mirror

“When I look, iam seen so I exist.” – Winnicott

Evaluative Mirror

Learning to see how others see you

Kellermann, Peter Felix 2007, Lets Face it, Mirroring in Psychodrama in Psychodrama Advances in Theory and Practice. Baim, Burmeister and Maciel, Routlidge