Using Psychodrama in Process Work

On Psychodrama

Over the many years, since 1992, I have been involved with Process Work that has used psychodrama in helping Personal Growth in labs. Have also used it, and adapted it to Executive Coaching.

We are all natural role players who do well when guided by their spontaneity and not by learned mannerisms. Psychodramas represent absentee significant others, with whom our relationships need to be resolved.  This is done in a theater, a canvas that allows for openness. The facilitator (the director) himself is the ‘tool’: his own style determines the intervention. If the tools are well set up, the method work: if held with authenticity.  

The process is about building awareness to the ‘here and now’. The initiation could be done by a ritual, a song, or by use of music. This warm up is essential to anchor the protagonist. It’s critical that the process is perceived to be safe. When facilitated well, it can be an invitation to explore, if done ineffectively, it could be seen as an intrusion, worse still a violation. All resistance can be explored through psychodrama: allows for it to move from an abstraction to a reality. The sensing mind ( limbic) connects to the conscious mind (the cortex), allows for reconnecting that which has been split.

In role reversal, the protagonist (primary ego) begins by taking the role of the significant other: and demonstrates it as experienced. This is a helpful diagnostic tool, which allows for data to emerge. Allows for examining old meanings and its reinterpretation. Enabling newer choices, newer directions, and newer actions. The whole idea is to look beyond the perception of the protagonist, because what we have is only a perception. And we know that the map is not the territory. In short, it allows for a refreshed relationship. Critical to ensure that it is not left just at the level of catharsis: insight must follow for integration. 

The auxiliary ego (assisting actor), can be introduced as a go between to the protagonists and the group. It borrows the authority of the significant others and acts from that: not as an imitation, but that which emerges from within, as held in the psyche. Or the intervention of being a ‘fly on the wall’.

Using doubling, as in shadowing, allows for the alter ego to get amplified. For the double, it is also insightful: awareness that comes from one’s own use of body, non-verbal, rhythm of breathing, etc.

Again, the work can be extended to collectivity (the group present). Here the macro ego looms large and brings awareness to the overall gestalt that is playing itself out. The other reality begins to emerge.

Work by Albert Ellis, Fritz Pearls, Moreno can be read further to understand more about what is described above.

Let me conclude by saying that work such as this creates learning and awareness once the work begins and ends when the work concludes. No prefix allows an easy introduction. No Suffix permits and easy summary.

As a process worker, the understanding and competency is acquired through practice, and not by theory. Explained from one to another: and not by literature.

Read also:
http://stevecorrea7.blogspot.in/2015/02/perceptual-canvas.html
http://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/power-tools/steve-correa/