Sydney

The three stages of the double, the mirror and role reversal, from birth to approximately 5 years, describe Moreno’s foundational sequence for human development. The corresponding techniques of doubling, mirroring and role reversal emerged from Moreno’s theatrical experiments with role playing and spontaneity in the 1920s. At that time, he knew that his psychodramatic methods worked, but not why they worked. His subsequent insight was that the therapeutic effectiveness of these techniques is because they “are profoundly related to the dynamics of human growth” (Moreno 1952 in Fox, 1987:136).

The art of psychodrama comes to fruition in the work of the director. The director functions to bring about the close-to-real-life portrayal of the protagonist’s subjective world, so that it becomes a springboard for their spontaneity, insight and creative intervention. In this regard, the director can be viewed as having three inter-related functions: the producer, the social investigator and the therapeutic guide.

In this workshop, we will focus on the function of the therapeutic guide, including identifying therapeutic interventions, managing auxiliaries, selecting what to respond to and why, and identifying the underlying principles involved, all the while remaining responsive to whatever is occurring on the psychodrama stage.

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.

In this workshop we will consider the structure of a psychodramatic session and the timely application of psychodramatic techniques.
November is often a time of integration of the year’s training and professional development and a time to be conscious of the learnings of the year  so they can be carried forward into our practice as group workers and individual consultants and clinicians. It is an opportunity for all participates to direct, be an auxiliary and also a protagonist within the weekend.

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.

In this workshop we will explore the  application of  the psychodramatic method  to work with  traumatised individuals. We will consider psychodramatic techniques and specific application in assisting the clinician  in the healing of a protagonist who has experienced trauma with resultant Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Enactments will inform our understanding and use of action interventions. The workshop will assist particularly in the theory and practice of the Clinician and Therapeutic Guide in dealing with this important area of focused learning.