Psychodrama is an applied, expressive and experiential group method focussed on J.L. Moreno’s spontaneity theory, role theory and group work. A variety of workshops will be offered in Adelaide in 2025.
Psychodrama training is relevant for people wanting to enliven themselves, their personal relationships and their professional functioning. Psychodrama method can be applied in various contexts including mental health, educational, organisational and community settings.
Upcoming Events
February – November 2025
Psychodrama training group (60 hours)
with Patricia O’Rourke
This series of six one and a half day training workshops will be for a closed group. Trainees will deepen their understanding of psychodrama, expand their role repertoire and capacity for spontaneity, and experience the potential of the psychodrama method.
The training will assist people interested in working with others in innovative and creative ways, with increased liveliness and from multiple perspectives.
The aim is to increase trainees’ capacity to create and maintain co-operative, authentic relationships and an enhanced sense of purpose, through learning about and participation in psychodramatic enactment and group work.
For more information, click on the green View Event button.
For participants in the 2025 Adelaide training group and other folk who are actively engaged with psychodrama training.
Current and Past Events
Psychodrama is a relational method. Dr JL Moreno the founder of psychodrama provides us with concepts and methods that enable us to recognise and articulate and apply elements and processes which constitute a relationship and enable us to participate to our mutual benefit. This workshop will focus on building a culture in which relationships flourish, where we are able to live and build, where healing and purpose can be fulfilled. The training assists in developing confidence in group presentations and in the development of interpersonal and group skills. Expect some writing and reflection time in each training weekend.
Psychodrama Training Weekend - Group Leadership
Often when we see a person bullying or otherwise abusing another, our first reaction is incredulity, shock and immobility.
In this workshop we will use the psychodramatic method to investigate the nature of bullying and our reactions to it , with a view to becoming effective at constructively intervening where possible. Later in the workshop we will investigate in action possibilities for cultural change in our institutions and general community.
Helen Kearins is a sociodramatist from Canberra ACT and her thesis addresses the questions: How can sociodrama be used to enable people to recognise and own their own racism and move beyond it and so advance the process of reconciliation between white Australians and the First People’s? And: What can we learn about the sociodramatic method by its application in this area?
Psychodrama is a relational method. Dr JL Moreno the founder of psychodrama provides us with concepts and methods that enable us to recognise and articulate and apply elements and processes which constitute a relationship and enable us to participate to our mutual benefit. This workshop will focus on building a culture in which relationships flourish, where we are able to live and build, where healing and purpose can be fulfilled. The training assists in developing confidence in group presentations and in the development of interpersonal and group skills. Expect some writing and reflection time in each training weekend.
This training workshop will invite the trainee to consider the work of Virginia Satir, family therapist to explore the meaning of and the application and integration of systems theory in sociometry, organizations, role theory, family therapy and group work. “The systems focus assists enormously the warm-up of the person you are with. It means that when there’s a system focus that individual starts to develop a fluid warm-up…they can relate to the different elements of the system and they are affected immediately by the different elements of the system.” The Living Spirit of the Psychodramatic Method (2004 Clayton and Carter p.147)
Trainee’s ability to make assessments will be enhanced during this workshop. There will be opportunities to investigate how the psychodramatic method can assist people who are anxious and depressed to warmup creatively and spontaneously to life. Trainees will familiarise themselves with what leads to anxiety and depression? Waking up to spontaneity and creativity can help to unblock repressed emotions and create healing.
The “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” DSM-V, will be introduced as one resource among many during the weekend and a YouTube “The Five Main Anxiety Disorders” will be used as a warm up to introducing the topic.
Psychodrama is a relational method. Dr JL Moreno the founder of psychodrama provides us with concepts and methods that enable us to recognise and articulate and apply elements and processes which constitute a relationship and enable us to participate to our mutual benefit. In this workshop participants will be able to investigate in detail what is involved in a healthy constructive relationship. Capacity to apply and practise these insights will be an integral part of the workshop.
In this first workshop we will explore and explain the Morenian stages of individual development: matrix of identity, the double, the mirror and role reversal. The associated specific psychodramatic techniques, doubling, mirroring and role reversal, will be applied.
In “The Living Spirit of the Psychodramatic Method” (2004) Max Clayton, who up until his death in March 2013, was a psychodramatist and trainer in Australia, and many other countries, reflects on how he develops a strong warm up to the stages of development from a psychodramatic point of view. Re the Matrix of Identity, Max notes that at a very young age a person starts to become aware of themselves in a variety of situations. “We can think of a person who has developed a strong trust in life, they start to generate an awareness of things happening around them and they become aware of their own actions and sometimes become more aware of their own experience.” (Clayton & Carter 2004 p.46)
Review and define the 5 basic elements of psychodrama (director, auxiliaries, audience, stage; protagonist). This training session involves supervised practice, working in the here-and-now of the group and developing the capacity to enter into the worlds of others experientially.