| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Watersong, Ali |
Surplus Reality: The Magic Ingredient in Psychodrama (PDF, 84.0 KB) |
Journal 20 December 2011 |
as if, auxiliary ego, concretisation, imagination, locus nascendi, maximisation, neuroscience, protagonist, role reversal, social atom repair, spontaneity, status nascendi, surplus reality, systems theory, unconscious |
Anything that can be imagined can be created on the psychodramatic stage. This is the magic that makes surplus reality a central aspect and powerful tool of Dr. J.L. Moreno's psychodrama method. Through surplus reality a person is able to enter the unknown, live out their fantasies and become the creator of their own life. Using psychodramatic work as illustration, Ali Watersong demonstrates the way that surplus reality facilitates the development of spontaneity, brings about social atom repair and assists in the formation of a positive identity. |
11 |
2011-12 |
