•Producer: Pays attention to the aesthetics of the drama, creating the right atmosphere through the stage’s physical set-up. Presents action as a stimulating piece of dramatic art. Well-practiced skills to handle the warm-up rhythm; to help auxiliaries personify roles; to utilize psychodramatic techniques creatively, and to time and pace the action for the best therapeutic results. The producer’s role repertoire and skill-set are shared by all Team members with the director or TL taking the lead for a particular drama. The most important aspect of the producer is safety at all times.
The TL and AL are partners in the initial planning of client and training workshops, including theme, format, art projects, facilities, and all details of the program. Additionally, TSM expands Team roles beyond any one protagonist or drama to include meetings before and after each day’s work to share information and observations and to plan the next segment of work based on this data. Each member brings any information they have about a group participant, in order to assess the emotional strength and needs of the participants and the sociometric connections and weak spots of the group. All information is shared and discussed with confidentiality and respect, the main purpose being to help each participant to get their therapeutic needs met through a positive group experience.
The wholeness of the Team means that each member has a responsibility to the full workshop and to the individuals who make up the Team, as well. This is not just the director or Team Leader’s duty. Since secondary PTSD is a fact, each member is responsible for self-care and will share what was brought up for them during the dramas or at any other part of the day. Again, this purpose is to enhance the performance of the Team. If a Team member has been affected by a part they played, an issue in a drama, etc., it is absolutely important that they get cleared of anything that will inhibit their full spontaneity in the work. It is a spoken and unspoken rule that Team members are there to help each other in their own healing, as well.
The Team Leader (TL) in TSM sessions takes on the director’s mantle, implementing all of the responsibilities and skill-set for the structure of the day and the dramas. Her or his main focus is to concentrate on the protagonist’s story, safety, and the overall clinical assessment and therapeutic interventions. In addition to being director of the drama, the TL is aware of all Team members’ personal issues and conducts Team processing after the dramas. Their responsibility does not end until the role is handed to another Team member. In some workshops, the TL is leader and main director for the duration of the workshop, while the other roles are shared amongst the Team members.
The Assistant Leader (AL), after its initial inception, evolved to become a fuller and more peripheral support role for the director so s/he could do their primary work—to focus on the protagonist. In a TSM drama, the AL acts as the medial person, the go-between of all the parts of the Team, including director. S/he is the regulator, the governor, the brain center and has the responsibility of managing the other “body parts.” The AL essentially doubles the director and looks for ways to bring in supportive elements of the protagonist’s story that the director might not be aware of.
For example, in one group a client shared with the AL about the Observing Ego (OE) card he had chosen—the part that will calmly observe with neutrality what is happening. The card represented his strong and gentle grandfather whom he knew only as a little boy. As protagonist, there was a point in his drama where he was in a repetitious role reversal with another part of himself and appeared to be stuck in an old pattern. While the director was doing an excellent job, the AL had some information about his OE that the director was not privy to and that might help at this moment. Therefore, getting the director’s attention, the AL pointed to the card the protagonist had tacked to the wall. The director picked up on this cue, led the protagonist to the card, and had him concretize his grandfather’s strength in observation. It was the role that was needed to get him out of a repetitive pattern. In this case the director of the drama was open to a suggestion and pursued it; however, this is not mandatory. The director must be open to information but does not have to follow it if s/he feels that there is another course that s/he is charting. In that case, the AL then continues to double the director on the set course.
Another main focus of the AL role is a keen awareness of the group, its sociometry, and involvement in the drama, since with TSM the audience is part of all action. Therefore, the AL will direct trained auxiliaries to take a role, become a CD or BD for a group member, or set up an alternative scene that will be addressed later in the drama. The AL has their eyes open and their antennae fine-tuned.
A Trained Auxiliary Ego (TAE) has two main role assignments in TSM:
1.to play any role that is requested of them
2.to double group members or the group itself.
Essentially, they take the initiative to fill some of the traditional roles of the director: primarily sociometrist and analyst, then therapist, and some aspects of producer, especially with helping group members stay safe and become part of the dramatic action.
Most of the time, TAEs are required to take roles of Victim and Perpetrator. Their responsibility to and for themselves is to make sure that they can handle these roles by having done their own work. This does not mean they cannot be triggered or deeply affected by the role they are playing, but they must have the means to handle it during the drama and to seek help afterwards so that they can return to TAE role.
In the drama, much of the TAE’s work is done through the roles they are playing. As the director is working with the protagonist, the TAE may see the need for an intervention through a role that had not been recognized or concretized yet. The TAE will run the idea by the AL and then will bring that role on stage. For example, the TAE may see that the protagonist needs a supportive interaction with their interpersonal strength. After running the suggestion by the AL, the TAE can double the person playing the interpersonal strength to bring that role to the fore. The director may lead the protagonist in that direction and the drama may take on a new dimension. If the TAE is playing the role of that strength and the director does not lead the protagonist in that direction, then the TAE stays in role and holds the strength the protagonist needs. In role, TAEs are continually checking their perceptions and alignment with the director, but it is the director who makes the final calls and decisions.
Using the Action Healing Team is a necessary and powerful addition to classical psychodrama, yet it can be fraught with difficulties unless its members are aware, non-competitive, and conscientious. Simply stated, this model particularly requires a great deal of flexibility and a tolerance for ambiguity, ambivalence, and change. In other words, it is a psychologically astute and mature model, highly spontaneous and creative, nothing less than the Team members themselves.
In Chapter 6, Dr. Cho guides you through an exploration of the Team structure and the TSM international certification training process from a Taiwanese perspective. For full information on the current International Certification Training Program in Trauma Therapy using the Therapeutic Spiral Model, please visit the Therapeutic Spiral Institute (TSI) website: www.drkatehudgins.com.
The Six TSM Safety Action Structures
To create controlled clinical action and warm-up, we developed a modality of Six Safety Action Structures (Cox 2001), adapted from classical psychodrama, art therapy, and Jungian-oriented sandtray, that are used in all TSM workshops. These Structures provide for: 1) assessment; 2) connection; 3) containment; and 4) narrative labeling of trauma—before we begin our first Prescriptive Role dramas.
Group members often find these clinically controlled warm-up structures tremendously powerful since they help them to move safely and more deeply into their trauma material with a sense of containment and a growing connection to other group members. The Structures teach them the opposite of their PTSD experiences of intrusive flashbacks, body memories, and intense emotions, so they can trust that