My sister was psychotic, not totally aware of her suicidal state, and in denial of the severity of her emotional condition. She presented a mixture of symptoms, making a treatment plan difficult. This was the second time I
had witnessed her illness. The first attack had taken place in 1936 when I was 19 years old. My previous experience with her enabled me to assist Dr. Moreno in her therapy.
My life’s work with Moreno began that moment and lasted for 33 years until his death at 85 years in 1974.
Treated by psychodrama and group psychotherapy, my sister recovered for a time and was once again admitted to Beacon in 1943, after the birth of her second child, and eventually diagnosed as bi-polar. When she relapsed sometime after the birth of her third child she was treated at another hospital because I was about to have my child and could no longer supervise her care. This time, her life was only barely saved by her husband from hanging herself, while home on a weekend visit from that hospital. The possibility of suicide was what I had feared most. Psychodrama treatment had prevented it in the past. She was again hospitalized elsewhere, recovered, eventually put on medication, but fell ill again from time to time when she discontinued medication. Sadly, this became her way of dealing with her illness throughout her life.
Bi-polar conditions are life-long. Some patients manage their condition better than others and function well, as my sister did, between attacks. In fact, many are very gifted persons. Today, psychotropic drugs are prescribed to maintain them over time. But for me, these formative educational experiences ran like a red thread through my life. They propelled me to help others.
My own background had been in art and fashion design. Some of psychodrama’s most creative specialists have come from one or another form of art. I studied Moreno’s philosophy, ideas, and methods and soon I understood their importance, not just for treating mental disturbance, but also for all of humanity. The opening sentence of Moreno’s magnum opus, Who Shall Survive?, first published in 1934 (a prophetic title, five years before the world plunged into war), reads, “A truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective than the whole of mankind” (p.1). (The 1953 edition of that book is now available for free on the web at www.asgpp.org.) It was never Moreno’s intention or vision to deal only with mentally disturbed persons, but he embraced all disturbances between people, cultures, and nations. That book also introduced Sociometry, the measurement of human relations. In 1944, Moreno introduced the concept of Sociodrama, the drama of groups, in the journal Sociometry: A Journal of Inter-Personal Relations.
Psychodrama and Its Origins
Philosophy
To understand the nature of psychodrama means to be aware that it is framed in philosophy. It is phenomenological in that it is centered upon the human experience, as philosophers have discussed throughout the ages in one form or another since Plato and are still engaged in. However, the dramatic nature of our work also makes that aspect of it relevant to anyone in drama. One of Moreno’s sources of inspiration was Aristotle.
GREEK THEATRE
Psychodrama, or “The Mind in Action,” was originally inspired by Greek drama, though it is not identical to it. Drama means “action” or “a thing done.” The word theater comes from Greek mythology: Thea, a Greek goddess, was a companion to another goddess, Artemis. The original plays were known as tragedies; they were about a central figure, the “protagonist,” whose life had become problematic. Greek theater was the first theater known in the Western world, though it existed in many other cultures in different forms as well. It is the basis of many theatrical terms we use today. But psychodrama differs profoundly from Greek theater in that while we recognize, explore, and respect the person in conflict, we do not stop there; instead we intend to lead that heroic figure to resolve the difficulties.
QUANTUM PHYSICS
I believe psychodrama is also close to quantum physics in that we deal with probabilities, not certainties or absolutes, as posited by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (Slobonowski 2009). Quantum physicists found that our observations determine realities and that human presence influences the outcome of any experiment. My hope is that in future psychodrama research this principle can be looked at in social interactions.
Research
It is impossible to predict the exact results of our work. We know only that there will be results. Although much of its effectiveness has been anecdotal, reported by those who have experienced it, often as life-changing, its effectiveness has been researched since the beginning, despite many claims that it cannot be researched. It has already been done on the use of psychodrama with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Hudgins, Culbertson, and Hug 2009; Hudgins et al. 2004; Hudgins, Drucker, and Metcalf 2000; Hudgins and Drucker 1998). (Editors’ note: see Chapter 5 by Les Greenberg regarding research on the efficacy of experiential methods.)
Those positive responses are not too surprising since current neurological research of humans actually supports many of Moreno’s ideas as it finds, among other factors, mirror neurons and muscle memory. Rauch, van der Kolk, Fisler, et al. (1996) have long demonstrated positive changes in brain structure from experiential methods, as Hug mentions in Chapter 4 of this book. I understand (Hudgins 2009, personal communication) that researchers at the Harvard Trauma Center are currently conducting pre- and post-MRI studies, demonstrating the effectiveness of experiential methods, some of which are derivative of psychodrama. It is conceivable that, in the future, additional bases and benefits will be found from action research and action therapy in terms of how the brain determines human emotions and behavior.
My Many Roles
In 1942 Moreno appointed me Research Assistant at Moreno’s New City Institutes and I continued to learn from him. What follows is a distillate of what I gained from him over the years, adding my own combinations and versions of that learning. Because Moreno’s manner of communication, both spoken and written, was hard for others to grasp, one of my first and basic contributions to spreading his philosophy and ideas was to present them in a more easily digestible form. I started to write about them in my own voice. A compendium of 60 years of my writings, from 1944 to 2004, was edited by Toni Horvatin and Edward Schreiber in 2006 under the title The Quintessential Zerka.
The Core of Classical Psychodrama
Spontaneity and Creativity Theory
Moreno’s central ideas are directly applicable to life itself. The awareness that we are all improvising actors on the stage of life, that we shape ourselves according to the roles we play with others, that some of us fail while some succeed, is self-evident. No one hands us a complete script at birth, so we would know in advance how to live. We have to learn to do it in action. Fortunately, every child is potentially born with great gifts, which are essential throughout our lifespan and repeatedly called upon to be used: spontaneity-creativity.
“Spontaneity” is defined as the ability to respond adequately to a new situation—and what is a newer situation than being born?—as well as a new response to an old situation (Moreno 1953). That has further been refined as a response of varying degrees of spontaneity to a situation of varying degrees of novelty. “Creativity” means producing something new that was not there before. Note that both center on the word “new.”
“Adequately” is interpreted as befitting the situation in which the action takes place, producing a balance between the inter-actors that is integrative but not disruptive. Unfortunately, there has been a general misinterpretation of the term “spontaneity” in this country, suggesting doing whatever, whenever, and wherever one pleases is acceptable. That description actually refers to impulsiveness, or what psychodrama calls “pathological spontaneity.” We have found the spontaneous person to be an internally disciplined person, a discipline that is not imposed from the outside.
Role