"Shine Like The Sun" Spring Psychodrama Workshop. Sydney, 4 days, Fri 30 Sept - Mon 3 Oct
Shine Like The Sun
It requires, for most of us, courage and trust in our spontaneity to lead a group or direct a psychodrama. As Max Clayton (1992:1) notes, in these moments we are negotiating two powerful forces that exist in an uneasy and dynamic relationship – ‘an inner urge to grow, to live fully in the moment, to experience purpose and meaning, to create ideals and live by them, and a contradictory desire for safety, the avoidance of the unknown and of appearing odd or different, the fear of letting go outdated roles and developing progressive roles’.
Through leading, we learn to recognise and manage these forces, which can be understood as the conflict between the personal and collective aspects of roles. Firstly, there are our expectations of ourselves as leaders, for example, the need to get it right and be able to access our spontaneity in a free and creative way. And secondly, there are the cultural norms, what others think of us, their expectations that we take sufficient authority to reduce anxiety in the group, that we follow the protagonist’s warm up and facilitate adequate sharing.
The resolution of these internal role conflicts involves recognising our warm up to leadership and then, clarifying and adjusting the way in which we balance the personal and collective elements in the moment. Role integration occurs as we absorb a new experience or insight into our being and allow it to influence our activity and judgment (Moreno 1993:198). Our warm up to leadership becomes unified and we are no longer caught between conflicting forces or roles.
In recognising internal role conflicts and embracing the integration of new experience, we arrive at role development. The valuing of role development usually requires us to slow down, to drop the tendency to self-evaluate and to take in the mirroring that is offered. We then increase our awareness of what we have done well as opposed to saying ‘yes … but’, which inhibits our growth and focuses us on inadequacy and the future. We grow when we value role development in the present moment, free from role conflict.
The aim of this workshop is that you, as trainee directors and group leaders, will increasingly live in the progressive roles that you have developed to date, that you will recognise role conflict, embrace role integration and value role development, that you will, in Pink Floyd’s words, ‘shine like the sun’ (Shine On You Crazy Diamond, 1975).
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
And you will know that, in psychodrama, as in life, being young is a matter of spontaneity flow...
Session Times & Meal Times
Please arrive by 9.15am for 9.30am start on Friday. There are two sessions a day, 9.30am - 4.30 with 1 hour for lunch break. The workshop finishes at 4.30pm on Monday.