Welcome to this Edition of Socio

Kia ora te whanau o AANZPA
Welcome, the family of AANZPA

Purea nei e te hau                  Scattered by the wind          
Horoia e te ua                         Washed by the rain
Whitiwhitia e te ra                   Transformed by the sun
Mahea aku nga poraruraru     All doubts are swept away
Makere ana nga here             And all restraints are cast down

Many thanks to the following contributors: Ali Watersong; Kate Tapley; Cissy Rock; Penny Beran; Alex Connolly.

Attending my first AANZPA Conference: some reflections from a trainee

Alex Connolly

In January 2020, I attended my first Psychodrama Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, after completing my first year of training with Jenny and Hilde in Melbourne. My background is within the corporate environment working in change, leadership development and cultural strategies. Having most recently done a piece of work in partnership with a psychologist, I met through Psychodrama, defining a framework for how to assess, diagnose and increase the level of psychological safety within a team. I was referred to Psychodrama by a friend who had recently studied the method and thought I would get a lot from it in the work I do. My friend was right, I have loved the method and my first year of studying. In this short commentary, I describe some aspects of my experience at the conference, as well as offering some reflections on the position of newcomers within the conference more generally.

At the conference, I attended Noa Gross’s workshop, The Flow of a Group. Noa asked us to choose an image that represented our journey to get to the Psychodrama Conference. The image I chose was an open dam with water rushing through it. The dam represents the way that I manage a lot of things in my life, I set up the structure – I buy the conference tickets, book the flights, arrange time off work – so that when things come up that might stop me from going, the dam is built and once it open, it ensures I go anyway. In the weeks leading up to the conference, I had some challenges come up. Fortunately, as intended, the dam I built, pushed me through.

I arrived in Christchurch excited to meet the extended AANZPA community, I had fallen in love with the method and wanted to immerse myself and learn as much as I could. Which I did. I loved experiencing the use of the method in very different contexts i.e. leadership development, team building, men’s groups and clinical work. I was taken by how, here I was, at the very beginning of a journey and I was watching people who have trained and practiced the method for decades. It was inspiring to see them work and hear their stories.  

Rosaline Kay Guzzwell was born in Fendalton, Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand on 27th January, 1939. She died in Eldon Lodge, Paraparumu, Wellington region, on February 27th, 2019.

Kay trained as a nurse and spent some time working in outback Australia as a Public Health Nurse and later as a midwife. After nine years she left her job working in the rural community to teach student nurses community health in a city hospital.

In her late thirties Kay came out as a lesbian and this became a strong central aspect of her life. She first experienced psychodrama in Wellington in the early 1980’s and felt that psychodrama was a method which would enable her to heal herself and to be all of her lesbian self in the world. She had developed arthritis and could see the power of psychodrama along with other ways outside the conventional medical model to help in healing her body.

She began working at Arohata Women’s Prison and with the support of her supervisor, Dale Herron, began training in psychodrama in the Porirua Hospital Psychodrama Training Group. She started attending training workshops with Max Clayton and Chris Hosking and also with Tom Wilson. Max became her Primary Trainer and she continued to develop as a psychodramatist.

I first met Kay on a workshop for women led by Dale Herron in Otautahi/Christchurch in 1984 where she was a trained auxiliary. We connected on our mutual love of the mountains and our lesbianism. She and her partner Anna encouraged me to start training in psychodrama and I joined them on a workshop in Levin with Max Clayton and Chris Hosking in 1986.

Kay and I initiated psychodrama workshops for lesbians in Otautahi/Christchurch in 1984 and Kay came down to run these workshops 3 or 4 times/year for the next 7 years. She had also begun running psychodrama workshops for lesbians in Wellington and Takaka. These workshops were well attended and over the years many lesbians experienced her wisdom, compassion and skill.

In 1988 Kay began running psychodrama workshops for recovering drug and alcohol users in Palmerston North and later that same year she began leading psychodrama workshops for survivors of sexual abuse. In 1991 she completed her psychodrama thesis entitled “Reaching Out into the Community with Psychodrama“ and it is based on her work with these groups of women.

Early in 1991, we were shocked to hear that Kay had had a car accident on 17th February in which she sustained a severe head injury. She had already completed the requirements to become a psychodramatist and was presented her certificate as a psychodramatist in January 1992.

Anna, her long-time partner, cared for her at their home in Johnsonville as she slowly recovered as much as she could from the trauma of the head injury. In February 1996, she moved into Eldon Lodge Rest Home in Paraparumu where she spent the remainder of her life. 

Kay was delighted to reconnect with Max and others at the 2007 AANZPA Conference in Wellington. Later that year she came to Kimi Ora, Nelson area on a 5-day training workshop led by Max and Chris.

In the Preface to her thesis she writes: “ …that the more I face and resolve the conflicts within my self and the more I am able to be my self in the world, the more I am able to truly stand alongside others  … My vision is that there will be an increasing number of ‘new professionals’ – people who have dared to use the knowledge gained from facing their own personal difficulties, who have disciplined themselves in their craft of psychodrama, and who are based in the community, who will be instrumental in changing old patterns.“

Ali Watersong with thanks to Deidre Perreau

Kate Tapley
In my article in this year’s journal, I wrote the horse is an authentic mirror and double for humans in a profound way in each moment. In the day session I ran after the 2020 conference, the participants worked with this around the topic of leadership. Each of the six participants was coached to present themselves to their horse as if they were a leader to them in the horses’ herd using the horses’ own language of focus, energy, rhythm and stillness. This language is ancient and requires us to let go of all our verbal language, all our controlling tendencies and rigidity in our bodies. The objective is to let go and trust the language and watch the horse in each moment.

I taught the participants to make their personal space more important than the horse’s personal space; to move the horse’s feet around, to move the whole horse around. This is how horses express their leadership to each other in their herd and this is what I was teaching the group members.

I taught this verbally, then demonstrated what I had taught then everyone had a go with their horse in pairs. So the pairs doubled each other as well as being doubled by the horse. We moved the front legs and the back legs separately asking the horse to move backwards and forwards and sideways noting why and how it worked well or not so well.

In the afternoon we worked the horse with nothing on them in the round pen one person and one horse at a time. We moved the horse around the round pen and asked them to come into our space, then we played the moving games we did earlier with them without any rope. This was to get our communication even purer than when on line with a halter. There was no filling in with the halter any more.

Each member did a superb job of exploring themselves beyond their defences, their fears, doubts, embarrassment, all risked being the fool and managed great results with their horses in the time we had. Each participant said they achieved what they wanted to and some. In spite of a very hot day, we all appeared to be inspired and learned about an ancient life beyond our fears.

I am available to repeat this workshop for anyone who is motivated to approach me to run it at mt Lyford with my three horses or someone else’s horses at their place. Jenny Postlethwaite and I are planning to do this in Newcastle once the world pandemic resolves. We will introduce psychodramatic enactment to this theme of the horse as an auxiliary for life.