| Hammond, Marian |
Freedom to fly: Reflections on a psychodrama group for women impacted by sexual abuse (PDF, 79.6 KB) |
Journal 33 December 2024 |
auxiliary, compassion, empathy, group therapy, healing process, perpetrator, sexual abuse, shame, shared experience, tele, trauma |
As I grew up I often heard my mother say, “A fellow feeling makes us wonderous kind”. This quote from the early 18th century English poet Alexander Pope underscores the power of empathy and how shared common experience and understanding produce a remarkable sense of kindness and compassion. With fellow feeling generated by shared experience and mutual tele, the understanding of the other’s feelings extends to include caring for the other’s well-being, usually expressed in a strong desire to be helpful companions to one another. For 25 years the Freedom to Fly Group has embodied this profound experience of spirit and solidarity. In this article I describe key aspects of the group and highlight what is unique about it. Case examples provide windows into the work in which the power of the ‘wonderous others’ can be seen in the healing of sexual abuse. |
6 |
2024-12 |
| Cassidy, Reitu; Close, Helen; Howard, Katherine; McCoy, Nikki; Merhtens, Jean; Pelvin, Bronwen |
Magical writing (PDF, 234.5 KB) |
Journal 33 December 2024 |
auxiliary, director, love, protagonist, role, soul |
“Now that’s the book I want to read!”. These words spoken by Geneen Marie Haugen at the “Writing the Wild Soul” workshop in November 2017 activated a sequence of roles in me over the following years. Geneen is a well-known poet writer who lives on the west coast of America — she had come to Australia to run this 4-day residential workshop. Geneen spoke these words in response to my reading of a piece of writing I had completed in the workshop, “a Letter to my Beloved”. |
4 |
2024-12 |
| Whisker, Craig |
Tauhara Encounter: Reflections on a Residential Psychodrama Group Session (PDF, 129.8 KB) |
Journal 31 December 2022 |
audience, auxiliary, auxiliary ego, creativity, director, doubling, encounter, mirroring, Moreno, production, protagonist, Psychodrama, psychotherapy, reflections, relationship, role, role reversal, sharing, spontaneity, tele, warm up |
Since 2013 I have co-led with either Marian Hammond or Selina Reid, and have twice led by myself, an annual winter residential psychodrama retreat at the Tauhara Retreat Centre located above Acacia Bay on Taupō-nui-a-Tia, Lake Taupō near the centre of Te Ika-o-Māui, the North Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. On each occasion I write copious notes describing workshop sessions and my initial analyses and reflections on them and I jot down insights from between-session or end-of-day discussions with my co-leader. The process of writing while memories and impressions are still fresh captures what in days, even hours, may be unrecoverable. When I warm up to re-entering the stream of consciousness I had during the session I often perceive more than I did when in the group. These are unpolished perceptions. They include wonderings or conflicts that I form into questions or pose as contrasting points of view and they sometimes cause fragments of associative thought to surface from deep within my psyche, or a new perspective to suddenly appear like the bright green tip of a spring bud. |
8 |
2022-12 |
| Bennet, Trisha |
Gifts of Encounter at Death’s Door (PDF, 167.1 KB) |
Journal 30 December 2021 |
auxiliary, death, doubling, encounter, flow, healing, J L Moreno, nursing, patient, Psychodrama, relationship, spontaneity-creativity, tele, vulnerability, Zerka Moreno |
Acute vulnerability, rawness, honesty, courage and depth all coexist and surface in the journey towards death. “I don’t want to die!” “It’s not fair, I’ve done everything right.” “I was not expecting this!” “I’m not ready!” “How can I leave them?” “I’m really afraid!” “I can’t even think about it!” “It’s too much!” “You wouldn’t treat a dog like this.” “This is their fault.” “Go away.” Embedded in each of these statements are offerings that communicate ‘what is’ for the person, each of which may lead to encounter. |
7 |
2021-12 |
| Carter, Dr. Philip |
Hopeless, Choiceless and Other Experiential Openings for Psychodramatic Theory and Practice (PDF, 251.3 KB) |
Journal 30 December 2021 |
auxiliary, Bohm, breath, choice, death, doubling, heart, interpersonal neuro-biology, loci of identity, love, Max Clayton, mirror neurons, mirroring, neuroscience, personal experience, responsibility, social field, social self, tele |
A warm-up One Tibetan breathing practice is to imagine a thick mass of toxicity below, breathe that into the belly and breathe out purified air. I assume the body is being used in the service of the universe. I give it a go. After a while, and totally unexpectantly, something else happens that I have never heard described. At the same time there is a cycling of muck coming in and clean going out, there’s another cycling of clean coming in and muck going out. It feels like two bellows being worked simultaneously but in opposite positions, interpenetrating each other in a yinyang way. |
2 |
2021-12 |
| Shaw, Yvonne |
The Honest Mirror (PDF, 1.2 MB) |
Journal 29 December 2020 |
auxiliary, auxiliary ego, mirroring, photographs, photography |
Photographs, even documentary ones, are ambiguous records. I am drawn to many types of photographs, ones that are tricksters as well as ones that are faithful. In my own practice as a photographer I am interested in making portrait photographs that mirror social encounters, photographs that connect the viewer to a depth of expression in human relationships. In April, 2019 I was in a marvellous, run-down theatre in Auckland making a series of photographs of psychodrama that I hoped would bring the method of psychodrama to life in a realistic way. This is the story of how that series came about. It is a telling of my love for photography and my love for psychodrama and the parallel I see between the photograph and the psychodramatic concept of the mirror. |
5 |
2020-12 |
| Tapley, Kate |
The Horse as an Auxiliary for Life - Natural horsemanship, psychodrama and leadership development (PDF, 178.2 KB) |
Journal 28 December 2019 |
auxiliary, healing, horse, human development, J L Moreno, leadership, Moreno, natural horsemanship, Psychodrama |
Natural horsewoman and psychodrama trainee Kate Tapley draws our attention to the horse as an auxiliary for life. Through her work training riders in natural horsemanship from a psychodramatic perspective, she has noticed that horses, unerring sentients that they are, act as auxiliaries for human beings, mirroring their inner often unconscious experience with immediacy and authenticity, and following only those riders who prove themselves willing to enter their here and now world of being-ness and presence, as ‘true leaders’. This article presents the application of this approach during a natural horsemanship workshop and the positive outcomes in terms of leadership development, healing and wholeness. |
7 |
2019-12 |
| Crane, Sara |
Tansy’s take on it: the dog as effective auxiliary in Moreno-inspired psychotherapy (PDF, 239.8 KB) |
Journal 27 December 2018 |
adolescents, auxiliary, auxiliary ego, child development, family system |
Tansy is a twelve-year-old Border Collie dog. When she is at home, she is a working dog and a pet, herding llamas and chickens and sometimes children, and playing with her son Mr. Brock, a Border Collie Huntaway crossbred. But Tansy has another important role. She comes with me, her pack leader, and companions me in the counselling and therapy work I do at the Urban Eden Psychotherapy Centre. In my first contact with prospective clients, I always let them know that Tansy will be there. When we go for long walks together in the hills, I often reflect out loud about my work with her. This particular kind of intimate soliloquy, that occurs when Tansy and I are outside together, is very precious and profound for me. This is our story... |
7 |
2018-12 |
| Kaur, Baljit |
Exploring the therapeutic potential of skilled auxiliary work (PDF, 70.3 KB) |
Journal 15 December 2006 |
auxiliary, protagonist |
Auxiliary work in any group has the potential of letting members see differently either off the psychodrama stage or the interactions within the group. Auxiliary work when undertaken in accordance with the considerations is a highly skilled act with therapeutic potential for the protagonist. |
5 |
2006-12 |
| Brown, Hamish |
Being an Effective Auxiliary: Some Reflections on Doubling and Dependency in Psychotherapy (PDF, 106.6 KB) |
Journal 21 December 2012 |
auxiliary, clinical psychodrama, dependency, doubling, relationship matrix, role constellation, social atom |
As a term, J.L. Moreno's concept of auxiliary captures the idea of entering into a psychotherapeutic relationship for the purpose of consciously assisting another person to develop spontaneity in a specific context. This paper focuses on a number of important elements in this regard: the importance of being an adequate auxiliary able to enact roles in response to specific social atom constellations; the importance of doubling within a role constellation to bring about social atom repair; the importance of allowing dependency in long term therapeutic relationships so that effective auxiliary functioning is maintained over time to promote the development of progressive embryonic roles. The concept of auxiliary is particularly helpful if we keep ourselves involved with the role constellations present in a person's inner world and the needs of the client within a specific context. |
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2012-12 |
