Naming roles bridges non-rational and rational functions, pre-conscious and explicitly conscious fields of awareness, and the intuitive and cognitive. Naming anchors the feelings in words so that the experience doesn’t just drift away. Just being a protagonist in a classical psychodrama sometimes leaves protagonists moved, but later they can’t tell you what they learned. Later they might admit that the experience didn’t change them, really. So I think that true maturation and integration needs a certain amount of cognitive anchoring; and ideally this comes not from just talking about things, but deeply experiencing them.
Shifting to trauma, a condition in which this problem is especially sensitive: people who have been traumatized have been not only deeply wounded, but also profoundly disoriented. For these people it may not have been who the enemy was. Traumatized people sometimes wonder, “Perhaps they were trying to help and maybe I was just being stubborn! I should have stood up to them!” Doubts such as these add to the stress immeasurably. Such people need the equivalent of heart surgery, and time on the psychic equivalent of a heart-lung machine. The team comes in and provides an external ego, playing roles that people who are merely neurotic can generally play for themselves.
Introspection, the ability to look at oneself, to take an objective stance, is impaired in trauma. There are too many unconscious pathological narratives. So through gentle direction, the protagonist plays a strength, and eventually becomes that strength, reminding themself that there is really something to rely on. People forget this. One of my mottos is that before putting people in touch with their negative voices, get them grounded in their positive voices. This book shows how TSM does this: once the protagonist takes on a strength role, then others play that part of the self that is strong. This process is profoundly effective, especially when one is a quivering mass of jelly. Re-minding is the key. Another double might re-mind the traumatized protagonist that the present situation is populated by real people and relationships that are positively caring—the interpersonal field.
At some point, after negotiating what images fit the client’s highest value or spiritual system, these sources may also be personified as roles, and that further “grounds” protagonists as they “hear” their “positive voices.” But for the fragile egos of truly traumatized people, even this isn’t enough. They need to be reminded of the activity in the present moment, re-grounded by the double in the here-and-now, or they dissociate into a whole “trauma bubble” of memories and defenses. So a team member may use the specific role of a “containing double” to remind the client on the spot that, hey, they can stop time, slow it down, get some distance. Folks don’t know they can use surplus reality to do this. And meanwhile there’s the body double who is echoing the body’s pain and eventual anchoring security: “I can feel the screaming in the back of my throat.” “I can feel myself aware of the closeness of my double—I’m not alone. I can relax my arms just a bit.” These refinements alone are marvelous! All the others are great too, but the point is that healing happens as one analyzes or breaks down the mess in the mind, naming roles, and adds the potential healing ingredients as if they were people. The enactment of this process goes so very deep, and that is what traumatized people need—nothing less.
When protagonists are well grounded they can begin to touch the pain; and the level of that pain is calibrated in TSM to be at just enough of a distance so that it is well within the manageable. As an example of role distance, in a re-enactment sometimes the victim role is played by someone other than the protagonist. This “role distance” allows the experience to be contained and mentally “metabolized.” The perpetrator role is also in the mind, what Jungians call a “shadow” function. A third role often played in TSM scenes is the authority who perhaps should have been more protective. This raises a question that may never have been present previously in the protagonist’s mind, and the exploration of that theme offers a hint of the ethos of protection. Such action explorations constitute the “heart” of the “surgery.” Staying with the metaphor, if the various roles were not coordinated, it could generate a re-traumatizing experience, but in TSM they are coordinated, and that’s the beauty of this work.
All this operates within a larger story: people feel stuck and hopeless. Can they take another role? The sleeping-awakening child role offers an unconsciously remembered state that is close to the most vulnerable and most innocent. Awakening protagonists before the trauma is dealt with can send them back into their inner hell or back into the dissociated “sleep” of their pre-therapy lives. On the other hand, awakening them at the healing moment generates an awakening to a sweet new day. It turns out that there are others—many others—that can show what was lacking at original trauma by offering examples of how it might be handled otherwise, kindlier. The catharsis has protagonists feeling something like “Wow, who knew it could be that way?”
Gradually, as the client is brought forward with a profound awareness of the vulnerability we all harbor in our souls, a process begins that is the equivalent of coming off a heart-lung machine, and sewing up the tissues around the heart. The client—the main player, or, in psychodrama, the protagonist—begins to learn by modeling how s/he can be the change agent, the manager of healthy functioning. Identifying with the roles played by the team and other group members, the recovering protagonist is ready to learn about how to be his/her own good parent. It doesn’t have to be perfect: good enough is okay—and that takes the pressure off. There’s even a built-in comfort that some relapse may well happen and correction can also happen. One identifies with being one’s own nurturing and limit-setting parent, significant other, even spiritual ideal; one integrates—that word needs to be emphasized—brings together and coordinates what is appropriate authority. Discrimination as to what is not appropriate authority is a role training skill here, too. And finally, there’s a re-grounding in whatever feels deeply good as ultimate authority. The patient comes out from the anesthetic.
A TSM drama is an eventful ritual into the underworld and out, and there are many components that must be orchestrated. TSM is capable of being used along with a broad range of other theoretical constructs, as long as they don’t get too preoccupied by being orthodox. It complements attachment theory and how people are integrating the findings of interpersonal neurobiology. As such, it is a particularly powerful grid, a system that can be deep and broad enough to supplement many clinical modalities and psychological or even spiritual orientations. Moreover, these techniques have been tested over 20 years on a wide variety of patients, and the material in this book is rich in clinical anecdotes and reflections. Yet there is a core of themes that keeps this approach coherent—not only a value for the definitely increased need of traumatized people to be grounded, but also for therapists to have a sense of the underlying strategy of the approach.
In summary, TSM is perhaps the most holistic and compelling approach yet devised, one that integrates the power of social support through the group or team setting with an approach that works at both the conscious and unconscious levels.
Adam Blatner, M.D., TEP, Georgetown, Texas, USA
Reference
Blatner, A. (2000) Foundations of Psychodrama: History, Theory, and Practice. New York, NY: Springer Publishing.
PART 1
Therapeutic
Spiral Model
Beginnings and
Evolution
Introduction
Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP, Theraputic Spiral International, LLC, and Francesca Toscani, M.Ed., TEP
While writing this manuscript containing several decades of work, our visual perspective broadened, as from an airplane, to encompass continents, bringing into focus the many treasured faces from over a dozen countries. Faces of many colors holding the deep angst and pain brought to our workshops. Faces also shining with the delight that the Therapeutic Spiral