Adam Blatner

Moreno not only developed psychodrama as therapy, but the method had many non-therapeutic, non-medical-model applications, in schools, churches, businesses, etc. I’ve written about several of these. I’ve commenced working on an anthology of such non-psychotherapeutic applications, thinking about titles—Action Methods, Reality Practice, Enhanced Simulations, etc. Moreno him -self supported applications of psychodrama in education and business, and others followed, but psychodrama is known chiefly as a type of psychotherapy. I want to counter this, but I shan’t bother trying to demote psychodrama. Rather, I want to re-name all the other applications one of the terms mentioned above.

Another advantage to this is that I need not restrict myself to psychodramatists. Related fields, sociodramatists and sociometricians, drama therapists and people in drama in educations, applied improvisors and others, all branch out like this! There are applications in other settings, too!

For example, my wife and I have just finished submitting an article to the drama therapy journal about how we use drama—reality practice—in our personal married life to smooth over the many transitions we experience together.

I’m open to hearing about other ways people use reality practice—that’s the name of the book!— to help with other things than psychotherapy. I’m willing to use the term psychodrama therapy for applications in therapy—or drama therapy, if that’s what is done. I want to sidestep the “name” entirely. Do you have any suggestions?