| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Levack, Glenis |
Creating a New Warm Up to Learning (PDF, 114.6 KB) |
Journal 31 December 2022 |
as if, coaching, doubling, encounter, J L Moreno, learning style, mirroring, parents, Psychodrama, relationship, role, role training, warm up |
Teenagers who are pregnant or who have a young child face many challenges in returning to school, especially when they have had a number of earlier learning experiences that have been discouraging. In this article, factors resulting in students feeling that they lack the capacity to learn are acknowledged and interventions that assist them to have a new experience of learning are described. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| van Kuilenburg, Philippa |
Distortion, Praise and Authenticity - The Power of Mirroring (PDF, 120.6 KB) |
Journal 29 December 2020 |
development, J L Moreno, mirroring, modelling, Psychodrama, relationship, role theory, Zerka Moreno |
Research has proven the need for positive social interactions for a child to survive (Poulton et al., 2020). A parent’s job therefore is to create a nurturing environment in which the child experiences themselves as being safe, loved and valued. For many of my clients their parents failed miserably in this duty of care as their particular way of engaging their child was through control, judgment and criticism. The child had repeated experiences of being victimised, humiliated, shamed, patronised and pathologized until their confidence was eroded, their perception of self skewed and their ability to relate severely impaired. Somehow however those children survived into adulthood and maintained a small kernel of hope for a different future that led them to sign up for an eight week skills based programme for women on anger management, identity, self worth and assertiveness. That’s when my work begins as I lead this self development programme. |
| Heriot, Anna |
Three Ceremonies: Sociodrama In Situ (PDF, 152.2 KB) |
Journal 29 December 2020 |
ceremony, doubling, J L Moreno, mirroring, social atom repair, sociodrama, spontaneity |
Introduction: Integration of sociodrama into my being I respond somatically to completing my written and practice tasks for my final accreditation. Experiencing myself cellularly as enlivened and buoyed, I am able to sink down into the ocean of my life and work fearlessly, then bob up again, corklike, lightly and joyfully. My confidence, strangely, also feels unsinkable: another completely new experience. I remember Max Clayton looking at me in one memorable moment and saying, “You’re alright you know.” I heard him and believed him, but I didn’t feel it. Now I do. I begin to present myself as a sociodramatist, one who works with the whole group and different subgroups. I know I offer them, and they actively receive, something of real value. I feel the reverberations as I work. |
| Logeman, Walter |
Encounter - The heart of psychodramatic couple therapy (PDF, 183.1 KB) |
Journal 28 December 2019 |
begegnung, couple therapy, doubling, encounter, J L Moreno, love, mirroring, Moreno, natural groups, Psychodrama, relationship, role reversal, spontaneity, synthetic groups, tele |
This article is concerned with the application of psychodrama principles and practices to couple therapy. In particular, it explores Moreno’s philosophy of encounter, that meeting of two, ‘face to face and eye to eye’, which lies at the heart of psychodramatic couple therapy. Drawing on illustrative material, the author shows the way in which the psychodrama structure of warm up, action and sharing apply in a couple therapy session, with the encounter presenting as the action phase. He also describes the psychodramatic techniques of doubling, mirroring and role reversal as they are used to facilitate the encounter. |
| Mapel, Tim |
Through a Glass Darkly: Coming Face to Face With Mirroring in Psychodrama (PDF, 122.0 KB) |
Journal 21 December 2012 |
Max Clayton, stages of human development, mirror technique, mirroring, Moreno, Psychodrama, Zerka Moreno |
Mirroring is a central element in psychodrama but the term is used in variable ways in different contexts. In this article, Tim Mapel investigates these various meanings. He focuses first on the historical development of the mirror concept in the writings of J.L. and Zerka Moreno, both as a therapeutic technique and as a stage of human development. Later writings, particularly contributions by Dr. Max Clayton, are then considered followed by a discussion of the contemporary uses of mirroring in psychodramatic production. What emerges is greater clarity regarding the concept and technique of mirroring. |
