| Callanan, Jennifer |
Taking Leadership of the Soul: Julie takes charge (PDF, 109.7 KB) |
Journal 32 December 2023 |
concretisation, creativity, cultural conserve, enactment, God, J L Moreno, leadership, Moreno, role reversal, soul, surplus reality, systems theory, transformation |
This article, using extracts from Jennifer Callanan’s Psychodrama Thesis, shares a glimpse into the complete work, “Taking Leadership of the Soul. Revitalising leadership development through psychodrama’s experiential learning approach,” completed in June 2023. |
5 |
2023-12 |
| Synnot, Elizabeth |
Praxis: Using psychodrama methodology to respond to the existential threat of climate change (PDF, 109.5 KB) |
Journal 32 December 2023 |
climate change, creativity, environment, modelling, Moreno, Psychodrama, research, sociodrama, systems theory |
What follows is the backdrop of climate change that affects all life on planet Earth. As a sociodramatist, at times, I work directly with this existential threat. I have found that research is needed to be able to direct a sociodrama on a general topic of ‘What matters today?’ or more directly on ‘Responding to climate change with hope and agency’. The content presented here is correct in 2023. As you’d expect the science refines each year. |
2 |
2023-12 |
| Maher, Jane |
Beauty and the Covid Beast (PDF, 115.0 KB) |
Journal 31 December 2022 |
beauty, creativity, health, internet, isolation, love, relationship, role, spontaneity, systems theory, vulnerability |
In this moment from ‘Beautiful World Where Are You’, Sally Rooney’s characters experience reunification, they embrace, after separation, conflict, breakdown and heart break. Beauty blossoms in their embrace. Embracing has been something that the Covid 19 Pandemic required us to curtail. Hugging, kissing, touching, proximity, gathering, all required more awareness, more planning; often constraint. At times the number of minutes we spent out of home were closely clocked, the distance from home and what we could go out for were prescribed. Likewise who we could be with. Mandated lockdowns, curfews, border closures, quarantining, masks, covid safety plans; all new ways of living imposed to mitigate a health crisis that might otherwise push through the pre-existing cracks and bring on total social collapse. In this context our priorities were naturally reviewed. Where do we find beauty amongst the unwelcome messes, fears, sorrows, losses; the burdens that discriminate unfairly. There have also been new possibilities. |
4 |
2022-12 |
| Simmons, Neil |
Moreno (Back) in the Doctors’ Surgery (PDF, 123.4 KB) |
Journal 31 December 2022 |
concretisation, creativity, health, mirroring, Moreno, patient, psychodramatic methods, relationship, role, social system, spontaneity, tele, warm up |
I am a creative being. As a child I was artistic. I was always making things; baskets, weaving, jewellery, drawings, paintings and furniture. Since deciding not to be a professional artist and to continue being a doctor, I have been on a quest to bring creative life to my medical work. In more recent years, psychodrama has been a companion in this quest. |
5 |
2022-12 |
| Rock, Cissy |
Embodying a Creative Revolution: A Sociodramatist at Work (PDF, 96.9 KB) |
Journal 31 December 2022 |
as if, community development, creativity, encounter, God, health, mirroring, Moreno, playback theatre, relationship, role, sociodrama, sociometry, spontaneity, systems theory, warm up |
This article explores Moreno’s notion of sociatry and the required creative revolution that involves everyone in the healing of society (Moreno, 1947). It will appeal to anyone wanting to work sociodramatically or wanting to get to know about Moreno’s concepts of sociatry and creative revolution. It is also relevant for anyone working with principles of social justice, equity, dignity, diversity and inclusion. |
7 |
2022-12 |
| 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 |
| Postlethwaite, Jenny |
There’s Lots of World Out There (PDF, 194.6 KB) |
Journal 30 December 2021 |
academic mentoring, coaching, creativity, human development, insight, J L Moreno, mentoring, metaphor, organisational culture, spontaneity, supervision |
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space (Card, 1995); sparking our imagination, our creativity, our understanding; providing us a royal road of relating to situations and possibility. Here follows a scene from a classic musical. I invite you to warm up to the world of a developing psychodrama practitioner. Don their garb, enter into this scene, sense the role relations, experience the spontaneity, look for what truth, insight and inspiration it may offer for them. |
5 |
2021-12 |
| Baakman, Paul |
Shining a Light on the Blues: the Gift of Psychodrama (PDF, 199.3 KB) |
Journal 30 December 2021 |
addiction, antidepressants, anxiety, creativity, de-institutionalisation, depression, role theory, social atom, therapeutic community, therapeutic relationship |
Introduction Structural restrains, in terms of mental health funding, a biochemical narrative based on shaky evidence and the profit motive in Big Pharma, contribute to a pathologising cultural force which promotes a medical model that has reduced aspects of human suffering to an illness to be cured by drugs. Psychodramatists, psychotherapists and counsellors can make a difference by providing psychodrama as a drug-free approach in working with depression and anxiety. |
4 |
2021-12 |
| Knottenbelt, Hilde |
A Place to Meet: Reflections on Group Improvisational Processes on Zoom (PDF, 882.1 KB) |
Journal 29 December 2020 |
creativity, director, German, J L Moreno, Moreno, poetry, protagonist, Psychodrama, spontaneity, warm-up |
Introduction It’s been a month since I worked face-to-face. The studio is looking decidedly casual. It’s become a place to hang out rather than a place to work. In the first weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, as I considered what my working life might look like in the next while, the word ersatz came to me. It’s a term borrowed from the German language meaning replacement, substitute, imitation, fake. In WW1 and WW2 ersatzbrot (substitute bread) was made with potato starch and sawdust and fed to prisoners who starved of malnourishment. I don’t want to create ersatz anything. |
3 |
2020-12 |
| Reekie, Don |
Creative Genius: A Spark in a Cloud of Unknowing (PDF, 111.9 KB) |
Journal 22 December 2013 |
creative genius, creativity, creator, director, genius, protagonist surplus reality, Psychodrama, spontaneity, tele and telic |
This article presents the author's conviction and work showing that a psychodrama director learns to follow the protagonist/client and trust a wide range of interactive communications. Their full nature may be hidden from the director. The protagonist can be unconscious of specifics or relevance. The writer accepts many cognitive functions of the central nervous system happen at a speed making conscious consideration impossible. Learning is not only an intentional act but is built into our mind-body functioning. This paper posits that the instances described involve dynamic inter-play of S factor (spontaneity) and C factor (creativity) within the Morenean universe of discourse, and considers creative genius as an integrative quality common in human functioning |
13 |
2013-12 |
| Howard, Katherine |
The Dance of Relationship: Using Moreno in Workplace Injury Rehabilitation (PDF, 90.2 KB) |
Journal 20 December 2011 |
coaching, creativity, cultural conserve, doubling, injury, mirroring, modelling, Moreno, Psychodrama, rehabilitation, role, role relationship, role reversal, role training, spontaneity, warm up, workplace |
Katherine Howard explores the use of Moreno's methods in what has become, in Morenian terms, a robotic workplace injury rehabilitation system. Presenting two case studies as illustration, she employs the metaphor of the dance of relationship to capture the way in which psychodramatic techniques transform difference and conflict into mutuality and cooperation, habitual coping roles into fluid and progressive functioning. This article is adapted from the author's 2010 Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association (ANZPA) accreditation thesis, Spontaneity and Creativity at Work: The Application of Morenian Methods in Workplace Injury Management. |
11 |
2011-12 |
| Browne, Rollo |
Psychodrama and Insight (PDF, 102.0 KB) |
Journal 22 December 2013 |
brain wave, catharsis, creativity, insight, intuition, spontaneity, warming up |
Insight in psychodrama occurs through the use of basic techniques such as concretisation, role reversal and mirroring. But it is not guaranteed. Drawing on research into the neuroscience of insight, the psychodramatist can explicitly focus on simple steps to maximize the possibility of insight: setting out the dilemma, shifting to a resting state and then bringing this state of being into contact with the presenting dilemma. |
13 |
2013-12 |
