I like psychodrama as a field, and also as a way of life. I\u2019m working on an anthology of applications of the method beyond psychotherapy—title: Action Explorations. I don\u2019t use psychodrama for these many applications, for the reasons mentioned below:<\/p>\n
First of all, I bow with respect to tradition: The word \u201cpsychodrama\u201d and the creativity of its originator, Jacob L. Moreno, M.D., generated a great deal of what Moreno himself called \u201ccultural conserve.\u201d Many of my colleagues in that field hold to that word.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, I have found the phrase \u201caction exploration\u201d to be more evocative of constructive associations for the following reasons: First, drama itself has shifted in its semantic associations. Drama used to include comedy\u2014think of the two masks used to symbolize that endeavor. But in the television guides in the last fifty or so years, drama has come to mean something that will scare you, or touch your hear to the point of tears. Whatever its connotations, they are not neutral or matter of fact.<\/p>\n
As for psycho\u2013 that phrase is too easily conflated with psychotic or psychopathic, as in the thriller in the 1950s, \u201cPsycho.\u201d Also, some enactments are role-related, and so more like \u201cSocio\u201d than psycho. A third unfortunate association is of \u201cpsychoanalysis,\u201d which was gaining in popularity when the term was coined in the 1930s, but as analysis became decidedly less popular, so did its associated term, In fact, in France, psychodrama has negative associations.<\/p>\n
Further, the term has gotten old, applied to many things that are not Moreno\u2019s method. There\u2019s even a rock band called \u201cPsychodrama.\u201d News items call certain emotionally-weighted\u00a0 events \u201cpsychodramas.\u201d The protestations of the few in a small field will not be heard. Furthermore, it\u2019s not only a form of psychotherapy, so many dictionaries have it wrong, too!<\/p>\n
So at least regarding the term for the activity, and at least for non-clinical settings such as business, education, or religion, I\u2019ve chosen the term, \u201caction exploration.\u201d I confess though that most of it involves the application of Moreno\u2019s methods. It also includes drama therapy, Bibliodrama, and other approaches that may not be anything that Moreno though of—it\u2019s a more inclusive category.<\/p>\n
Essentially, then, what action explorations (or\u00a0 psychodrama) offers is a chance to play the supposed scene through: An idea is converted into action. In a way, that\u2019s what science does: Make it into an experiment. Try it out in action. See what happens. So for the reasons mentioned above, I pro-pose the use of the phrase \u201caction explorations\u201d instead of psychodrama. That phrase evokes few or none of the associations of psychodrama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I like psychodrama as a field, and also as a way of life. I\u2019m working on an anthology of applications of the method beyond psychotherapy—title: Action Explorations. I don\u2019t use psychodrama for these many applications, for the reasons mentioned below: First of all, I bow with respect to tradition: The word \u201cpsychodrama\u201d and the creativity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-explorations","category-psychodrama","category-psychotherapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}