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What is Psychodrama?
Psychodrama is an action method, invented around a century ago, in which group members use spontaneous dramatization, role taking and dramatic self-presentation to investigate and gain insight into their lives. Due to its utilization of the entire experience of any situation and its spatial emphasis of perspective building, psychodrama is an extremely potent method for personal transformation and change. Being a group method also makes it very economical in the sense that every participant in the group benefits from the work of other group members.
Psychodrama includes elements of theater and is often conducted on a stage or a space that serves as a stage area. A specific place defined as a stage makes people experience physical and psychological safety to explore their lives. Some props or materials are also used at times. A psychodrama group, under the direction of a certified psychodramatist, works across the spectrum of time. Participants might a) reenact real-life present situations, blocks, difficulties that they might want to understand better and resolve; b) look at past situations, unresolved issues, unfinished business (and related inner mental processes), acting them out in present time in order to unhook from them; and c) create future projections of how they would want various aspects of their lives to unfold in the coming times. Participants then have the opportunity to a) evaluate their behavior, b) reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present, c) understand their inner mental and emotional processes that are recurrent and d) develop deeper understanding of particular situations of their lives.
Psychodrama offers a creative way for an individual or group to explore and solve personal and professional problems. It may be used in a variety of clinical, community, organisational and educational settings; in which other group members (audience) are invited to become transformation agents (auxiliaries) to populate the scene of one participant (protagonist). Besides benefits to the designated client/protagonist, benefits accrue to other group members, as they make relevant connections and insights to their own lives from the psychodrama of another.
A psychodrama is best conducted and produced by a person trained in the method, called a psychodrama director.
A core tenet of psychodrama is Moreno’s theory of “spontaneity-creativity”. Moreno believed that the best way for an individual to respond creatively to a situation is through spontaneity, that is, through a readiness to improvise and respond in the moment. By encouraging an individual to address a problem in a creative way and act spontaneously, they may begin to discover new solutions to problems in their lives and learn new roles they can inhabit within it.
Over the years, psychodrama has become a well-established method in different parts of the world and is applied to a wide variety of settings like education, business, social work and health care, over and above the clinical one.
