In order to increase the possibility of obtaining positive results during the treatment of mental patients, in modern psychotherapy have been recently introduced the so-called “active” methods, which make use of the body language and of a therapeutic control based not only on words, but especially on facts. Once proved the effectiveness of these methods, to the psychopharmacological therapy have then been added other therapies like psychotherapy, theatre therapy, music therapy, which, through this multitherapy treatment of the mental disease, have deeply improved the quality of life of mental patients.
Over the last years music and theatre therapies have gained a particular importance. Indeed music, i.e a form of human activity which involves sounds, since the dawning of civilization has always been in every culture one of the primary human practices. All early tribes used to play percussion instruments during their rites, and already in the most ancient times stringed or wind instruments accompanied those words emphasizing highly emotional moments such as falling in love, marriages, funerals, etc. Music is sure enough deeply permeated with emotional meanings and its relation to human psyche is very strong.
Theatre, too, is probably as old as mankind, and one can find the earliest forms of theatrical expression in the rites of early civilizations. Within theatre therapy a particular importance has gained in recent decades Moreno’s psychodrama. The technique of psychodrama has been first tried out in 1921 by Jacob Levi Moreno.
From 1921 to 1924, with his “Extemporaneous theatre” Moreno experimented the spontaneity of theatre: it is in fact in front of the public that, in this kind of representations, masks are built and painted, the dramatist sets up his text without a definitive written form, the actor creates his character and the public is invited to freely react and interact. This way Moreno realized how important is the public and became thus aware of its possible employment in group phenomenon.
MORENO’S PSYCHODRAMA
Psychodrama is a way to change the world here and now by using the basic rules of animation. Psychodrama is a psychological method of approach allowing people, through the performance on stage, to express the various aspects of their lives and to connect them one another in a constructive way. Thanks to the scenic representation on stage, psychodrama fosters the settling of a more harmonious intertwining of intrapsychic needs and reality’s requirements, letting people rediscover and enhance their spontaneity and creativity.
In Moreno’s psychodrama the main characters have to improvise their role play starting from a current, a past, a future or an imaginary situation. It is obviously understood that it is a very useful form, because it allows the subject to project into the drama he’s playing his true concerns, his attractions and his repulsions.
J.L. Moreno, pioneer psychiatrist in the field of group processes, discovered in the 20s how important and effective can be for the subject the scenic representation of his life, of what he experiences, has experienced, or would like to experience, or would have liked to have experienced…This performance allows him to begin, in a sheltered and comfortable context, a perceivable, active and constructive dialogue between the different aspects of his life. So the subject can reach a higher level of self-awareness and trust, and can thus find more spontaneous and creative ways to relate to himself and to the others.
Psychodrama is hence a method of personal development based essentially on “putting into action” the contents of the inner world. In psychodrama the subject “is playing”, thus materializing on stage his mental representations.
On stage the main character is actively concentrated in knowing himself and in developing his inner resources: he listens to the various elements of his inner and relational world, his doubts, his questions, his skills, his failures, his desires, his needs…
With psychodrama the person is put on condition to (re)experience situations instead of just telling them. He can speak with the different parts of his inner life, with the different persons inside himself (now internalized), instead of talking about them.
This kind of approach geared to improve the interpersonal relations, thanks to the use of different techniques typical of action’s methodology (role’s reversal, double, mirror, soliloquy, sociometry, etc.) permits crystallized and repetitive inner situations to be removed, crisis situations and problems to be solved, alternatives more respectful of himself and others to be searched and discovered.
With its development of an active dialogue, this method helps the subject to find the way to a change, which brings him to autonomy and creative spontaneity.
Psychodrama’s sessions (each of about 2 hours) can be aimed both to personal growth (when the participation to the psycho dramatic piece is basically directed to the knowledge of oneself and to the harmonization of the inner needs of the person with the requests of reality) and to vocational training (when the subject takes part to the psycho dramatic piece in order to gain a greater expertise in the professional management of his interpersonal relationships).
Moreno, acquainted with the Viennese cultural avant-garde of the Daimon’s magazine, became at the same time aware of the stimuli coming from the theatre experimentation, from the interest in clinical medicine and psychopathology, and not last, a strong motivation to social change and the defence of the weak people.
These four different perspectives (philosophical/ideal, theatrical, clinical and social) are the basic elements of psychodrama and they must coexist and complement each other, to avoid the denaturalization of the method itself. We should therefore better talk of a psycho dramatic method, instead of psycho dramatic techniques, because it is exactly the meaning implied in technique the element determining the formative and therapeutical value in a group work.
A tête-à-tête meeting: staring each other, face to face. And when you’ll be by me I will catch your eyes and put them in place of mine, and you’ll catch my eyes and put them in place of yours, then I’ll look at you with your eyes and you’ll look at me with mine”.
Moreno identified some aspects of the group work which are central both in the training and in the therapy.
– The group autonomy. Autonomy opposed to the dependence on the guide leader. A training or therapy process cannot be completed if there hasn’t been any progress on the way to autonomy both of the group and of the single subject, which makes him realize about his resources and possibilities of change.
–The existence of a group structure and the consequent need to know it. The intervention of a group cannot be regardless of an analysis of the relations inside the group itself. The training or therapeutical process will play on the possibility of a change inside this kind of relation structure.
– The problem of collectivistic life: behaviour patterns, roles and socio-cultural factors affect the situation independently from the features of each single person. The intervention of a group is not addressed only to people, as they have specific personality structures, but it is also directed to people with relation to their role in a specific social context.
Inside the group participants tend to preserve their anonymity, the borders between the several “ego” become frailer, it is the group itself who, in its totality, becomes more important. The intervention inside the group aims not only to produce psychic well-being in the single individuals, but also to let individuals learn to relate to people with the same social background in a more appropriate way. This learning process can only occur inside the group, where the ego disappears while the importance of relation, of identifications and of the contact with the other is emphasized.
Contact and “tele”: “tele” is a Greek word meaning far off, at a distance. In morenian language it shows the emotional stream which binds together a person to another in a mutual way.
We can better understand this concept by distinguishing it from two other concepts well-know in psychology: empathy and transference. The word empathy implies an individual quality, which helps a person perceive and share what somebody else is feeling in a certain moment: it is therefore a one-way process. The concept of tele is on the contrary a bidirectional process, which in other words can also be described as mutual empathy or emotional communication at double-way.
On the other side transference implies the projection on somebody else of one’s subconscious imaginations and it shows the return of old experiences on the current situation. Genetically speaking transference develops after tele and is structured like a kind of substitutive relational process, after the failure of satisfying mutual relational experiences . Tele is on the contrary a primary relational modality, which was not learnt, and is potentially always active, teachable and subject to development in social relations.
Learning spontaneity
Already in his early works Moreno analysed the concept of spontaneity and its relationship to creativity. This is a basic and central concept in the clinical field because the spontaneity degree of the patient in his relationship with the others is relevant to indicative of his mental health. Lack of spontaneity is expressed through anxiety and/or by a rigid and stereotyped behaviour. Learning spontaneity in interpersonal relations means learning to answer in a syntonic way to what the environment request (without distorting requests and reality) and to our inner needs (without defensive stereotypes and letting come out the real needs and the true emotions). It could be useful to remind, on the other side, that Moreno did not applied the concept of spontaneity only to psychopathological phenomena.
On the contrary, the interest in spontaneity was aroused in him by observing the actor on stage and he developed this concept further in several situations aimed at “training up” the actor, the single person and the group to play new roles. The usefulness of this concept in vocational training is quite clear, as it would give the subject in addition to the necessary theoretical and technical expertises, also the capacity to adapt himself flexibly to the different people he meets and to the different professional situations he experiences.
Moreno proved that in the development of spontaneity action and extemporized scenic interpretation play a central role. He supposes that in the workings of memory are involved two different ducts (the centre of action and the centre of content), and emphasizes that learning spontaneity, in order to be effective, necessitates an action context. Only on this way contents and actions can find their synthesis in the capacity of achieving spontaneous roles and behaviours.
Spontaneity and control
This dynamics spontaneity/control is necessarily a part of psychodrama. Only a guileless vision of psychodrama can consider the dimension of spontaneity truly authentic and the dimension of control just as a restriction. About this idea Moreno says:
“Psychodrama is both an educational method to self-control and a method of free expression. The suppressive character of our culture ended up giving the “expression for itself” a very often excessive value. Methods like role’s inversion or role representation, as they need restriction, a retraining and/or re-conditioning of excitability, represent a very underestimated and overlooked use of psychodrama. It is especially the interpolation of resistences which allows the ego to gain ever more control towards an emotion very often put in scene in psychodrama” (Moreno, 1980).
