The Group and its Protagonist

I wrote a psychodrama thesis that was published in 1999. it took me 15 years to write. I appreciate I did that work – not sure I’d manage it now! I could give it a good edit.

It stands up today as expressing a central idea about the interconnected ness between people… the group is more than the sum of the pars of the individuals. It is the sum of the relationships between them. That is like looking at the stars… grasping the group life is an art. And sometimes a child can do it.

I just posted the thesis on Academia.edu. No idea if that is a good thing to do!

https://www.academia.edu/2001479/The_Group_and_Its_Protagonist

Its also here on this site:

https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/wp-content/uploads/The-group-and-its-protagonist-Walter-Logeman.pdf

 

Serendipity and the Sociometric Matrix

Just read a post on John Frame’s blog on Serendipity.

Mank

… a strange force called synchronicity, or the coming together of things at one moment in time by that non-linear force called synchronicity. I argued how synchronicity might be related to the two greatest films in Hollywood and one of the most famous books in American history.

Lovely stories about great movies follow.

It made me thing about how drama work… how in psychodrama we use synchronicity – we don’t call it that, but we refer to making the sociometric matrix visible.

Synchronously I was just uploading my 1999 thesis to this blog.  I read it through the other day and I was quite pleased with it.  I am working with trainees who are writing psychodrama thesis.  And it seems to do what I teach now.

Have a clear topic  and audience.  The central “thesis” needs to be present throughout.

Imagine the task of the group leader when faced with diverse individuals and how this might conflict with the desire to have coherent group life.

Join me as a systems thinker, becoming aware of the inter-relationships in the group, to be able to use the imagination to see the life of the group and the life of individuals.

In art, poetry and psychodrama things come together…

The-group-and-its-protagonist-Walter Logeman

Dr. Rory Remer

Homepage
I am delighted to have discovered Rory Remer’s site. A Psychodramatist, TEP. Now more focussed on Chaos theory and how it leads to other psychotherapeutic modalities.

Of particular interest are these papers:

An Introduction to Chaos Theory for Psychodramatists

The interesting thing is that here, for the first time I have seen someone make the same point I have in my Psychodrama Thesis and in my Moreno & Scientific Method paper. The fractal nature of the systems.

Blinded By The Light
A critique of “evidence based” practice.

Gender Issues
Has a link to a good article “Did I Hear You? What Are You Really Saying?” (not by him but Denise Twohey and Antoinette L. James University of North Dakota)

And an interesting couple of pages on supervision.

I want to read more some of this carefully!

Varieties of Encounter

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

Continue reading “Varieties of Encounter”