Sydney - Canberra

Shine Like The Sun: 

Recognising Role Conflict, Embracing Role Integration and Valuing Role Development

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contradictory desire for safety, the avoidance of the unknown and of appearing odd or different, the fear of letting go outdated roles and developing progressive roles’.

The aim of this residential 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...

The best way to understand the power of psychodrama is to experience it and these evenings are designed to give participants an opportunity to experience psychodrama in a safe and gentle environment. Each session will be directed by an experienced psychodramatist with time available for questions about the method and its applications.

Many of us are committed to an on-going process of learning throughout our lives. We each have many experiences which assists us to develop. How we learn, explore and process those experiences can assist us or hinder us in learning. A person can be an open learner, a most helpful style to integrate and process experiences and communication. Other styles of learning include being a dependent learner, an anxious learner or a fighting learner.

In this workshop we will consider and explore the many learning styles to assist us when working with a variety of people, as well as in our own evolution. It will assist us to be alert to the particular personality and role systems a person enacts and how that person explores and learns from a particular experience. It will also assist us as to integrate roles we enact in response to anothers efforts to learn.

This workshop is an opportunity to focus on areas of your own development that will assist you to be more engaged and effective in your professional and personal life. Using classical psychodrama we will work with the interests and concerns of group members.  The intention is to bring your actions and relationships more in line with who you are and what is important to you, so that you live life with greater vitality.

Participating in this workshop meets the experiential hours requirement for entering a training group in 2019.

Curious about psychodrama and what makes it work? Thinking about whether it is for you? 

This program is the perfect place to start.

Boundaries, professional ethics, sex, money, conflicts of interest, dual relationships. In traditional societies these complicated matters are closely codified and norms taught and enforced. We live in a society where the traditional protocols between individuals no longer apply and are not passed on, even where there is token acceptance. This often bewildering and painful maze demands sophisticated abilities to negotiate.
This workshop will alert participants to potential conflicts of interest in their own world and in that of those around them. Action investigation and role-reversal, and perhaps some healing, will feature as we seek to develop more adequacy in navigating these cross currents.