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May 3, 2008
Psychodrama: Therapy in motion Do you find yourself
talking about wanting to change old behaviors, improve relationships,
step out of the past, define goals or just understand yourself and others
a little better? Some would say merely
talking about it becomes just that - a bunch of talk. "Action trumps talk,"
said Rebecca Walters, a licensed creative arts therapist, mental health
counselor and co-director of the Hudson Valley Psychodrama Institute
in New Paltz. Using a therapeutic method
called psychodrama, Walters helps people work
out their problems by acting them out spontaneously in a group setting
where they can test a variety of responses and learn to shape outcomes
that are potentially more satisfying. "Telling the story
and showing it is a very powerful experience for healing," said
Walters, who conducts psychodrama sessions, training and educational
workshops in Conceived and developed
by European psychiatrist Jacob L. Moreno, psychodrama entails all the
elements of a real-life theater drama - actors, director, stage and
props. "Psychodrama is
one of the most valuable, to the point, action-oriented psychotherapy
techniques available - the speed at which you can get right to the problem
and find a resolution is amazing," said Dr. Samuel Klagsbrun,
a psychiatrist and executive medical director at Four Winds Hospital
in Katonah, which provides psychiatric services for children, adolescents
and adults. "By testing things
out in a make-believe way, you encourage people to take a chance and
try things they may not do in real life," said Klagsbrun,
who discovered the therapeutic value of psychodrama during his residency
at Yale New Haven Hospital 40 years ago and then made it a fundamental
part of treatment at Four Winds. Walters is also director
of Child and Adolescent Psychodrama Services at She said it's also used
by regular folks with regular problems - men and women contending with
irascible bosses and challenging co-workers, parenting dilemmas, strained
partnerships, financial insecurity - pretty much anything that gnaws
at us. "Psychodrama is
good for anybody who wants to develop more spontaneity and creativity
in their lives … for seeking personal growth and development,"
Walters said. Poughkeepsie resident
Rhianna Mirabello, 45, attended
a psychodrama session a couple years ago and re-enacted a haphazard
encounter she had with a manta ray while scuba diving with a former
boyfriend. Mirabello said the boyfriend was
unresponsive and "oblivious" to her plight, which seemed to
reflect the disconnection and abandonment she was already feeling in
the relationship. She eventually left her mate but said revisiting the
event using psychodrama helped her to recover from the hurt and disappointment
and move forward. "It was very healing,"
Mirabello said. "Seeing it outside myself
enabled me to view the situation differently and realize that I could
take back my power." "[Psychodrama] is
taking a new approach or a new response to an old situation or an adequate
response to a new situation," Walters said. "It's also a place
to revisit the past and redo and say things that weren't said, change
the way things turned out." At a recent open psychodrama
session at After a series of poignant
and dramatic warm-up exercises, the group selected the evening's leading
character, also called the protagonist: a middle-aged man on the edge
of retirement struggling to find balance and harmony in his relationships
with his adult children. Standing before the group,
the protagonist - whose name is not being used to protect his privacy
-described a son trapped in extended adolescence who expects a perpetual
handout. Another son, preoccupied with work, won't spend time with or
listen to Dad and exhibits compulsive behavior. His daughter, while
very warm and loving, constantly leans on Dad to baby sit and make home
repairs. The protagonist was suffering
from "doormat" syndrome and the inability to assert himself. So what could he do to
change that? First, he picked individuals
from the group, called auxiliary egos, to play the roles of his children
- only he'd be supplying most of the dialogue. "It isn't the real
person we're dealing with but the person that lives inside of us. That's
why they're called auxiliary egos," Walters said. Plus, Schirrholz said, "This is not really a drama about
his children, it's a drama about his perception of them and the relationships
he has with them." During the next couple
hours, the father's psychodrama unfolds through numerous and carefully
guided role reversals punctuated by displays of despondence, frustration,
stubbornness, fear, anger, grief - a lot of tug-of-war and some occasional
glints of joy. "It was powerful
for this protagonist to stand in the role of each of his children, look
at himself through their eyes and discover better ways of dealing with
them," Walters said. But getting in touch
with the deepest of feelings is never easy, and sometimes the right
words are hard to find. In real- life situations, that's usually when
the communication starts to get fuzzy or stops completely. In psychodrama, audience
members are on hand to help keep the dialogue focused and moving with
a technique called doubling. If someone in the group sees the protagonist
struggling to identify or articulate a feeling, that person can take
at shot at providing one. "[Doubling] keeps
the group involved, it lets group members do a little piece of their
own work and also makes the protagonist really get that they're understood,"
Walters said. During one scene, Dad
had trouble explaining why he couldn't say no to his daughter. A woman
from the audience hopped up on stage, stood behind him, put her hand
on his shoulder and said to the daughter, "If I say no, you're
going to be angry." The director jumped in
fast and asked the protagonist if that felt right - was that his truth? "We're not going
to assume it's right unless the protagonist
says it is," Walters said. "If it's wrong, change it." It turned out it she
was right, so Dad repeated the words to his daughter. But before she
could respond, Schirrholz had them switch
roles again so he could answer in her shoes. "Instead of letting
the auxiliary ego answer, we switch the person into that role so that
we get what his perception is," Schirrholz
said. So, what did he think
his daughter would say? "Just say no, Dad.
I'll still love you. I love you," he said. Then the auxiliary repeats:
"I love you, Dad." "This may not be
the exact feelings of the other but often it is, and just the physical
switching of places with the other person often gives us a sense of
what they're feeling," Schirrholz said. The scene concluded with
a tender embrace. New outlooks gained The man's psychodrama
came to a climax with a technique called future projection, a time to
consider how he might approach the relationships differently. Unresolved issues loomed
- with one son in particular - but a new and unmistakable self-assurance
had surfaced. The protagonist said
he felt less afraid of asserting himself. The session ended with
the group sharing, a final and important component of a psychodrama. One person raised her
hand and said she related very closely to the story because she had
recently broken free from years of leaning on her own father. Watching
the psychodrama reinforced how good it felt and how much healthier it
was for her to be independent. "You're not giving
advice, you're not giving feedback, you're not interpreting," said
Walters about the group sharing process. "You're simply connecting
from your story to their story what you felt about your own self as
you watched this." The woman who played
the protagonist's daughter said the experience was deeply and unexpectedly
therapeutic for her, too. Receiving that tender paternal hug - even
though she was playing someone else's daughter - fulfilled a longing
inside to be hugged by her own father who wasn't very affectionate. "People think psychodrama
is only about making a lot of noise and spilling your guts … hitting
pillows and doing lots of catharsis work," Walters said, noting
that often times it is. "But sometimes psychodrama is just about
OK, if this isn't working, how do you handle it? And it might just be
a matter of getting up and walking away." That's exactly what happened
when Mirabello played the protagonist in her
own psychodrama a couple years ago. "[My auxiliary ego]
was taking control of the situation," Mirabello
said. "She walked away from the boyfriend and I got to stand on
my power and see how it looked. It was very healing." |
