Adam Blatner

It occurred to me that another function of psychodrama is social validation.. We are social beings who are unconsciously asking, “Do you see me? I exist. Does anyone care? Does anyone find me interesting? Am I in any way a part of the whole?” A colleague in Italy wrote that in a sense, the field of theatre is the “mother” of psychodrama. It responds to those who have the courage, responding to the need, to share—and show—the inner world: How it is, and how they want to transform it.

What if Freud underestimated the psychic needs, and Jung, who expanded these many-fold, similar underestimated the social, the need to show and share. What if social connectedness is a fairly basic human need? To dance in a circle together! I dare to suppose that that need became not only over-ridden as culture became more industrial and atomized, but then overlooked and neglected!

Alfred Adler was the most extraverted of the early depth psychologists, and he talked about “Gemeinschaefts-gefuehl”—lamely translated as “social interest.” Make it more a need, a need to feel part of what is intuited to be the group. It explains good stuff and horrible stuff—behaviors that had gone unexplained.