Journal articles

Authored by Oliphant, David

Author Title Issue Keywords Abstract Sequence
Oliphant, David Book review: Moreno’s Personality Theory and Its Relationship to Psychodrama: A Philosophical, Developmental and Therapeutic Perspective By Rozel Telias (PDF, 279.5 KB) Journal 30 December 2021 book review I am grateful to have been asked to review this book. I hesitated at first. Although I have been around Psychodrama circles for around twenty years or more, I have never qualified. But I feel some sort of connection with Moreno. I had a big experience of what I believed was God in my early twenties, and I lived in shame of my megalomania; until Moreno came along. It has fascinated me that when he had the experience that led him to write The Words of the Father he gave up on religion; when I had my experience I gave up on atheism and took up religion. He said that he had found God without religion and eventually I came to see that perhaps I had also. I began calling myself a secular religionist. I have Moreno to blame for this. So you see, he is quite special to me. 9 2021-12
Oliphant, David Exploring J.L. Moreno’s Spirituality and Theology (PDF, 269.2 KB) Journal 28 December 2019 Psychodrama J.L. Moreno’s theological thoughts are not always taken seriously, even by those devoted to other aspects of his work. Yet clearly, they were foundational for him on any reasonable reading of his life. Creation and history are God’s stage for God’s psychodrama and Moreno got to be part of this in a very big and direct way, or so he believed. He role reversed with God and understood this as part of the unfolding of God’s subjectivity in history. Traditional theology thought of God as ‘object’. Now it was clear through Moreno’s experience that God was to be thought of as ‘subject’. God now no longer needed religion because he had entered the secular world fully, as spontaneity and creativity. This article explores some of the implications of this shift and highlights the centrality of our ‘responsibility’ as co-creators with Moreno’s God, which is the spontaneity-creativity of the universe. 1 2019-12