Abridged version of
Social panoramas,
social atoms and
role reversals
Steven Balmbra’s psychodrama leader examination
Introduction
In this article I compare the principles and practice of Psychodrama with working with Family Dialogue Set. It is written as an imagined meeting between myself and Dr. Jacob Moreno, the creator of Psychodrama, Sociodrama and Sosiometry, who died in 1974. It is in the form of a monodrama directed by my friend Bjørnar Hansen, where I improvise the roles of Dr. Moreno and a boy named Erik. The original text was an examination, written to demonstrate my knowledge of psychodrama. This shortened version omits sections about psychodrama theory.
Steven
I developed Family Dialogue Set while I was working in the Family Unit of the Child and Adolescent Unit of Nordland Hospital in Bodø. When I started working there I had responsibility of running family sessions with parents and children and I found this difficult because the children often became distracted, uninterested or apathetic. Getting them involved in the conversations was sometimes very difficult for me, especially when they were young. It occurred to me that there was something about the way of communicating that was not suitable for the children. It was very easy for the parents and me to get caught in adult conversation that went over the heads of the children.
At the Family Unit we
were working with families where there were problems concerning the children
which the referrer thought could be improved by working with the relationships
in the family. We worked mainly with the parents, looking at their ways of
seeing the children, understanding them and understanding their situation.
We were trying to find new perspectives, helping the parents to look in new
ways to see and hear their children differently than they had been doing so
that they were better able to give them the help they needed. We wrote about
our work in two articles that were published in Fokus på familien, the Norwegian
family therapy journal (Finne et al. 1994, Pedersen et
al. 1997).
My colleague, Inger Finne, used some wooden figures developed by a man called David Kvebæk when she was telling us about a family she was working with. She was able to demonstrate how close the family members were to each other and I found this was very interesting. I used to spend time in the playroom of the Family Unit together with the children. When they were playing I would watch and join in with them. I saw how they used Playmobil figures in games about pirates, cowboys and Indians, police and robbers, parents and children. As I was also participating in the therapy conversations with their parents I was able to notice that issues and conflicts that we were working on in therapy sometimes had clear parallels with the conflicts the children were playing out with the figures in the play room. I saw how young children often used figures, dolls and concrete things of that sort, to express themselves. I thought that if I am going to try to get children involved in family conversations, why not see if I can use these figures to bring the form of the conversation to the children’s level, rather than expecting the children to communicate in an adult way. So I put together a set of figures, enough to represent the people a child would be actively involved with, three boards to give structure to using the figures, and some pens and accessories all packed in a carrying case. I found this set very useful so I started making copies for other family therapists to use. This was in 1989 and now there are about 200 of these sets spread throughout Scandinavia.
Moreno
My name is Jacob Moreno, I am a medical doctor. I lived in America most of my life, from 1925 until my death in 1974, but I was born in Europe. I like to keep the details around my birth shrouded in myth. This is to do with some of the ideas I have about creativity and spontaneity. I believe that anyone can be their own creator and that creativity is godly. So I have created a mystery about where was the place of my birth. I tell people that it occurred on a boat on a lake between different countries, so that it actually has no worldly place. I do not want to be thought of as belonging to institutions like the family or the state. I want to be seen as belonging to the great family that is humanity, and to the Cosmos. My mother was Catholic and my father was Jewish and so I was brought up in two religious traditions. I have come to my own conclusions about divine inspiration. I compare creativity to birth, nascendi, in Latin. A god, I believe, must be a supremely creative and spontaneous being, always in a state of creativity, status nascendi, and at the place of creativity, locus nascendi. Actually I have strong reservations against the idea of god as a being. I think more in terms of a creative force and that the creativity within each of us is the godly within us. In the introduction to my first book Words of the Father I wrote “God is spontaneity. Hence, the commandment is: Be spontaneous!” (Moreno 1941). When I was only 4, I pretended to be God when I was playing with my friends. I climbed up on a pile of chairs and gave commandments to the others, who were angels. Then I started to believe I could fly and when I threw myself into the air I fell and broke my arm. I gave up acting after that and I have concentrated on directing others. My parents moved to Vienna when I was 6 and I grew up there. When I was a medical student before the First World War I used to watch the children playing in the park. It was wonderful to see how unrestrained they were, so free in their expression, so unlike the adults I mixed with at university. I started telling the children stories which I made up on the spur of the moment, and I began to realise about the importance of spontaneity for human life.
I was the creative force behind several movements for the benefit of mankind. I started a theatre group and in 1921 we developed Stegreifteater, a new form of spontaneous theatre which did not rely on pre-written manuscripts. The audience participated, gave us the subjects for our plays. We made a living newspaper, wanted to bring about social change. We tried to engage our audiences, wake them up and to bring spontaneity to people of Austria. There were a lot of social tensions in Vienna between different groups, and on one occasion I actually hired a theatre and invited 1000 important people and had them, one after another, sit in a chair on the stage and tried to get them to be creatively involved in resolving the turmoil in Austria. I cannot say that it actually worked very well, but at least I made an attempt and I did not give up, I just moved on to a new challenge. I believe in the importance of action. The task I set myself was enormous. If you want to know more about my life Renee Martineau (1989) wrote my biography and you can read more about it there.
The philosophy of Henri Bergson was important for me in the development of my ideas about creativity. I met Sigmund Freud once – he was a generation older than I was - after a lecture he had given on the analysis of dreams. He asked me what I did and I replied: “Well, Dr. Freud, I start where you leave off. You meet people in the artificial l setting of your office, I meet them on the street and in their home, natural surroundings. You analyze their dreams. I try to give them the courage to dream again. I teach the people how to play God.” (Moreno 1946 p.5-6 ) I also edited a literary journal called Daimon after the first war and I came in contact with many great thinkers and artists like Martin Buber. The great movie actor Peter Lorie was in fact a member of my theatre troupe before he started making films with Fritz Lang.
During the First World War I worked as a doctor in a refugee camp in Mittendorf. The people were living all mixed up in the camp and there were a lot of social tensions between the different groups. I worked in a very methodical way at finding out who should be grouped together with whom and after the people were moved according to their preferences life at the camp improved a lot. This was the beginning of sociometry, the science of the measurement of human relationships.
When I moved to the USA in 1925 I tried to establish the theatre of spontaneity there. It did not go well to start off with. There was a fiasco in Carnegie Hall where everyone walked out. However, I was able to develop my ideas and methods. I started working at a boarding school for girls and further developed the science of Sociometry which I was able to apply in many settings (even Sing Sing Prison). I wrote about my work there and my ideas in my book Who Shall Survive. In the end I was able to establish my own clinic and training establishment, Beacon House, and I started my own publishing company there where I published my writings.
Steven
What is your first impression of Family Dialogue Set?
Moreno
There are a lot of dolls here and I don’t like dolls. Dolls are representations of people with their spontaneity removed from them. They are like robots which represent the worse thing I know, human beings without spontaneity. In the first volume of Psychodrama I discourage parents from giving their children dolls to play with as they can develop the roles of master and slave. (Moreno 1946 p.71) They should rather send them out to play with other children than waste their time with dolls!
Steven
You have a point; the figures do not have spontaneity in themselves. They cannot interact and play out a role on their own volition. That is one of the major differences between Family Dialogue Set and psychodrama which uses people. But the figures can be useful to people to show certain aspects of how they perceive their relationships with each other. If you compare this to an artist with his brushes and paint. The items do not have spontaneity in themselves but they are necessary elements in the spontaneous and creative act of painting. Dolls and figures, I agree, lack spontaneity, but people can use them in a spontaneous way. They can give an opening for a new way of seeing things that can bring out spontaneity in the people present.
Moreno
Then tell me about the kinds of situation do you use these dolls and show me how you use them.
Steven
I think these figures can be used in many ways and situations, but I developed them for conversations with younger children and their families. When I work with a child and their family I usually start with them setting up a representation of their social network which I have recently called a social panorama because of the kind of overview it gives. I think this is similar to what you call a social atom. I usually start with a board that looks like this:
As you can see,
it is covered with hexagons, the centre being coloured red. I ask the child
to choose a figure to represent them self and put that on the red area in
the middle. Then they choose figures for other people they know well and
place them on the board where they think they ought to stand.
Moreno
The social atom is a concept of mine based on my understanding of how society is built up. You can look at society at different levels, from the entire world of people, to a country, a community and at the small level of social reality, which is the relationships a single person has with the other people around them. These are the people they meet in their everyday life, with whom they interact and who are important to them in one way or another. I call this smallest matrix of relationships a social atom because it is the smallest part of the social structure. Everyone has their own social atom and parts of their social atom will be shared with other people. This eventually builds up into a huge network which covers the face of the earth.
Steven
A social panorama is
visual and in the work around it there is no attempt to fill scientific criteria
of reliability or validity. In setting up and working with a social panorama
there is no measuring involved. The basic purpose in using Family Dialogue
Set is to establish
and carry out a conversation, an
exchange, a dialogue that will help the participants to hear and understand
each other better. This is done by asking the child to choose and place the
figures on the board as they see fit and at the same time talking about the
people the figures represent and what they are expressing by placing them
on the board.
I talk to the child
about where the people represented stand, how they stand, the relationships
they has to them, what things they do together, and their view of the relationships
they have with each other, who gets on, who doesn’t. The way this is done
depends, of course, very much on to the child concerned, their age and so
on. It is important to look and listen carefully at what the child is expressing
if the conversation is to be careful. There is no standard procedure in using
this set, the conversation should be spontaneous. I try to pick up important
themes and ideas springing from what the family are saying rather than ideas
and hypotheses about their structure and pathology. It is important to stress
that when I work with Family Dialogue Set I am not
working individually
with children (some people use it that way, but I don’t). I always use it
with the parents and sometimes other members of the family present.
When we begin using the figures to set out a social panorama the parents often start off as witnesses, like an audience, watching what is happening and listening to us talking. As the conversation continues on I draw the other family members in and talk to them about how they have seen things, their thoughts and reactions. I ask them to show us their own perspectives by moving some of the figures to demonstrate and we have a discussion about the differences and what they have meant for the ways they see each other and behave towards each other. This is my basic way of working, and I would like to hear your comments so far, Dr. Moreno.
Moreno
Well, I do see that the way the dolls are set out can give an interesting representation of a social atom. However, I believe that you want to do more than this, you want to use these representation in a therapeutic way. The point is then not just to make a picture, or a social panorama as you call it, but to how can this help your patients to be more creative and spontaneous in their lives. It is when a person is no longer able to act in a creative and spontaneous way that they develop psychiatric problems and they have problems with their relationships with others. So far I can see how this social panorama could be a way of warming up to a more active way of working, but this seems to be no more than an introduction to true therapeutic work.
Steven
I ask the child, or anyone in the family, how the present social panorama is different from ones representing the past or the future. I ask how this is different from the situation before the present difficulties began and have them show me by moving the figures and we will talk about the differences. I also ask how they would like things to be in one years time and how they are afraid they could turn out to be, and I will spend time some time talking about their hopes and fears. This is directed at the process of change and in my experience the discussions that come out of it are very useful, especially when family members can show each other their different perspectives.
Your comment does raise a very important and interesting issue and that is the question of what are the elements of good therapeutic work with people.
According to a narrative tradition, established by White and Epston (White 1989, White M Epston D 1990), which is quite prominent in present day family therapy, we live our lives according to the stories we believe in about ourselves, each other and the relationships between us. These stories are incomplete, as we often overlook or forget certain episodes and experiences, while we emphasise and focus on others which become dominant for our identity and relationships. Some people internalise very negative ideas and dominant stories about themselves and these are very destructive for them and often for those around them. The first steps in therapeutic work is to identify these internalised identities (e.g. I am a weak person) and their destructive influence. Having done this the problem is given an identity separate from the person themselves, a process called externalisation. Therapy is then concerned with waging a campaign of attrition against the externalised problem, recruiting as much help as possible from the people around.
Moreno
Then I would like to
mention some of the aspects that I see as important parts of psychotherapy.
Peter Felix Kellerman has included a summary of my therapeutic principles
in his book Focus on Psychodrama (Kellerman 1992).
The first aspect is Tele which is my own invention, developed from the concept
of empathy. Empathy is where one person “tunes in” to the emotional wavelength
of another person. It is a one-way concept but Tele is about two people tuning
in to each other. It is a mutual concept concerned with two people’s awareness
of the make up of the personality of each other. What use is it if one person
understands the other but is met with no understanding them self. Now, Tele
is not a permanent state, it is fluid and variable. At times we are closely
tuned in to one another, we can tell what the each other are thinking and
feeling about something and feeling and how we will react, yet at other times
we can be surprised by our lack of insight. Tele does not just exist between
two people; it is also an important part of any group of people. I talked
about the social atom and how people were attracted or repulsed by one another.
A group with a high level of tele not is necessarily one where everyone likes
each other, but it is one where people are aware of each others attractions
and rejections.
Now if we apply this to the history of psychotherapy two other concepts may come to mind; transference and counter-transference. Now, in psychoanalysis transference is concerned with feelings that a patient projects onto their therapist. Counter-transference is likewise about the feelings that the analyst can feel for their patient which are awakened by the patient’s projections. The patient is encouraged to indulge their transferences to gain insight from the analyst who has to be aware of his or her counter-transferences and uses them to provide insightful interpretations to the patient. I believe that Freud overlooked the aspect of role. (Moreno 1959 p.8, 98). Transference is not about one person’s feelings for the other person, but also their feelings towards a role that the other person is perceived as having or representing. It represents a state of low tele as the genuine characteristics of the people themselves have faded into the background and the roles are centre stage. Now, because I work with groups and have other group members take the roles in a person’s psychodrama, then I, as director, avoid having transference projected onto myself and I am much freer to build up tele in the group and to direct the group members in their therapeutic work. Any transference occurs between the group members, and then it is important always to deal with this at the end of a session by de-roling and sharing of feelings, reactions and experiences. How are you dealing with tele when you are working with families using your dolls?
Steven
When I am working with families I am working with a small group of people who usually know each other very well. But when they are having difficulties with their relationships it seems to me that they can stop seeing each other, and instead go over to relating to the ideas they have of each other. This can develop into a situation where the one family member believes that they know the other better than the other knows them self, but that the other does not understand them at all – and this may well be mutual. This may be based on certain oversimplified characterisations like “He’s lazy” “She’s a bitch” which the other does not recognise in them self. This would be a situation of low tele.
Large parts of children’s lives are lived away from their parents - at school, out playing in the neighbourhood – and the parents have no direct experience of what is happening in these situations. If their children tell them about their experiences they will often be selective in what they tell, and information from teachers and other adults, while valuable, will be coloured by their position, preferences and responsibilities. My point here is that parents may often believe they know their children very well and know a lot about their lives. Children have a tendency to blame themselves when things are difficult and may feel responsible for the difficulties that their parents are having in their relationship with each other. What I find interesting in using Family Dialogue Set and building social panoramas is that parents are often very surprised over what their children show them and tell about what they experience and how they understand things. I have many examples of how working with the figures has given necessary information, clarified misunderstandings and increased the tele in a family. For example, Peter, a young boy living in a small community had often complained to his mother about how his older cousins had bullied him. His mother thought he was being soft and gave him advice about how to stand up for himself. When the Peter set out his social panorama he used the figures to demonstrate the ways his cousins tormented him and his mother was shocked at their brutality. After discussing what would be the best way of dealing with this she got in touch with her parents and they organised a kind of family council of the adults who worked together to put a stop to the bullying without blame falling on the little boy. The mother also looked at the way she had previously interpreted the boy’s complaints, how this was related to her tendency to see her son as if he were herself as a child. Other family therapists I have spoken to have also told about me their experiences of how work with Family Dialogue Set increases the mutual understanding and empathy between family members.
Moreno
The next element of therapy I will mention is catharsis which I have written about in the first volume of Psychodrama (Moreno 1959 p.14-20). Many therapists have emphasised the importance of catharsis and it is indeed and ancient concept stretching right back to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. In Greek theatre, the audience would go through a cleansing of their souls through seeing the tragedies with the interventions of the gods because they were moved in a spiritual and emotional way and this was called catharsis. In middle-eastern tradition salvation comes to the holy man through his making an effort to purify and save himself. He is the protagonist who experiences the catharsis because it is he who takes the journey through suffering. Sigmund Freud took the catharsis principle from the theatre of the Greeks and elevated it to the principle goal of the psychoanalyst. Today catharsis is usually understood as the combination of an insight into hidden aspects of the past and a powerful emotional release giving the patient a psychological purge. I believe that most psychotherapists do not place enough emphasis on how the catharsis experience is integrated into the present day life of the person. In this way much of its value can be lost. For this reason, it is important that the action phase in a psychodrama is followed up with the closure and sharing phase. I would like to hear how do you deal with catharsis when you work with your dolls?
Steven
As far as I know there is little evidence that the catharsis in itself is particularly helpful in bringing lasting changes in people’s lives. I do not have the therapeutic aim of producing a catharsis experience when I work with these figures. On the other hand, using Family Dialogue Set with children can be quite an emotional experience, especially for the parents. I recommend working with a co-therapist who can have a special responsibility to be aware of the parent’s reactions. The new information that often comes out of the social panorama can be a surprise for the parents. The parents are being presented with part of their child’s inner reality in a concrete and visual form that is difficult to overlook or deny. There is a strong pressure for them to reassess their own point of view and ways of understanding and this can be very challenging for them. I believe that it is usually important to follow up a session with Family Dialogue Set quite soon with a conversation with the parents to talk about how they understand what they have seen and heard and what are the implications. I agree that the integration process is very important and should not be overlooked.
Moreno
Another aspect that I believe is important is that of activity. As you know, the main issue for me in my therapeutic work is to help people to become more creative and spontaneous in their daily lives and this is not an intellectual matter, it is a matter for the whole organism. Action is an important part of creativity. There is no point in being Mozart if you do not play an instrument, no point in being Nijinsky if you do not dance. This is one of the great differences between my methods and other forms of psychotherapy, that people are involved with their whole bodies. I don’t say “Tell me about your relationship with your mother”, I say “Show me! This incident that is important to you, we can act it out now. Who will you choose to play your mother? OK, change roles with her. Show us her body posture, how she looks. How does she speak?” You see, when the person changes role back and forward, back and forward they speak the words, they hear the words, they become more in tune with their role, more spontaneous, they build up tele. And it is when they have tele that they find the insight and then the emotions can come, not just their own, but they can feel the reality of the other person. Tell me, when you are using your little dolls, what activity is involved?
Steven
Last autumn I contacted a number of family therapists who use the Family Dialogue Set and interviewed them about their experiences with it. One of the things that were mentioned several times was that it requires active participation. Children choose the figures and place them on the board and this small amount of activity was seen as being important. It often took a little time. The children searched for the best figure, they held it and usually fingered it as they thought about where to put it. When they had placed it they looked again and maybe moved it. When they talked about the person the figure represented they sometimes moved them again. So in a small way they were involved with their bodies, there was action involved in using Family Dialogue Set. If their parents wanted to show their perspectives they also moved the figures. In psychodrama you want the protagonist to show the others the situations they are concerned about. This is a principle that is shared with Family Dialogue Set. So far I have only talked about making a social panorama which is the basic use of the set. I would like to show you how else it can be used in a more creative way.
I remember one young lad I worked with some time ago. We can call him Erik, and though I will have to change a few of the details about him because of the issue of confidentiality, I can tell you how I worked with him.
Erik
My name is Erik, I am 10 years old and I live in a small fishing village. For the last few years I have had a big problem with my anger. When things do not go my way I explode into a rage - I shout, I throw things around, I hit people. I do this at school and at home. My sister and I argue a lot the time at home and then my mum locks herself in her bedroom and I sometimes hear her crying. I often get sent home from school and the head teacher has said that I am a danger to others and he does not want me to go there any more. He wants me to go to another school but the next school is a long way away and I cannot travel there every day. I never do any homework and I have fallen way behind in most of my subjects. I am good at football but I am not allowed to play in the team anymore because I start fighting if someone annoys me. The grown-ups say that they are at their wits end and they don’t know what to do with me. Some of them blame my mum because she doesn’t do any thing about me.
I am here at the Family
Unit in Bodø with my sister Linda and my Mum. Steven asks me to choose Playmo
figures to be me, my family and people I know well. I don’t choose many figures
because I don’t have many friends. This is me and this is my mum, and this
is my sister. He asks me to talk about them and I say that I am angry with
my sister because she winds me up all the time and I always get the blame
even when it’s not my fault. My mum does tell me off but she is not very
strict with me. Steven asks mum why she is not very strict and she says it’s
because she feels sorry for me because of my dad and she does
not want to upset
me. This is my Grandma who lives about 40 miles away, and this is my friend
Simon. We used to play together a lot before, but he doesn’t come round here
so much now. Even at school now he hangs around with the other boys and they
keep away from me. Some of the bigger kids say I’m mental.
Steven asks me where on the board my Dad’s figure should be. That’s difficult because Dad drowned 4 years ago in an accident – he was a fisherman. I’ve chosen a figure that looks like my Dad’s photo and I put it near the edge of the board. I think about him sometimes and that makes me feel sad. Steven asks about what memories I have of my Dad, and what sort of things we used to do together. I used to like going out in his boat, and going with him to town, and going walking in the hills.
Then Steven asks me to use some plasticine to make a model of my anger – a sort of anger troll. Yesterday we started speaking about my anger as if it was a troll telling me what to do.
I use lots of colours and it looked like this:
We talk about what
the anger troll gets me to do at home. Then we draw my classroom and I show
where I usually sit, and where the others sit. I sit mostly alone at the
back and the others sit in groups, but that doesn’t worry me. And then we
talk about some trouble that happened in class a few days ago, but this time
the anger troll is also here. I see that Robert is staring at me in a funny
way and the anger troll pops up and tells me that Robert is bothering me.
Steven asks me to show what the anger troll says I should do and that is that
I should shout at Robert to stop staring or I’ll come and get him. Then the
teacher tells me not to shout and she does not say anything to Robert who
started it. The anger troll tells me that every one is against me and that
I should swear at the teacher, push my desk over and go home in protest against
being treated unfairly. And then the school rings my mum and I can hear her
saying she doesn’t know what to do. And Steven then asks mum what the anger
troll is saying to her and mum says that it’s really her fault because she
is a bad mother and nothing’s going to get better and all she can do is lie
down in bed and cry. And then my sister comes in and the anger troll gets
her to shout at me because of what’s happened at school again and that it’s
my fault that she gets called names because and she says that I am a moron
and that she can’t stand the sight of me. And then I try to hit her but she’s
bigger than me so she hits me hard and goes out to her friend’s house and
doesn’t come back all evening. And then I watch TV and I have to get my own
food because mum has gone to bed and she won’t answer me. And when she gets
up she’s crying and says she’s sorry, but I don’t know why because she hasn’t
done anything and it’s not her fault.
So then Steven asks me what my Dad thinks of the anger troll and what it is doing to our family. I hadn’t thought of that before, but I think my Dad would be unhappy and angry with the troll. I know did not like wars or fighting. So Steven asks us about what sort of advice my Dad would give to me and my mum and my sister.
So we go back to the classroom
scene again and Dad is with me as well this time and when the troll says I
should shout at Robert my Dad said that I should tell
the teacher instead to get him
to stop staring. And Dad said that I shouldn’t listen to the troll about
pushing over the desk and swearing because he wants to be proud of me. Dad
said he wanted me to do well at school and that he did not want the anger
troll spoil my chances. He said the anger troll is a shit that is only trying
to spoil things for me, and so I call it Shitty. And then I take the playmo
figures of me and my dad, and we smash Shitty into the ground, and my mum
and sister joined in. And then I take it and crushed it into a ball and rub
it together and when the colours mix together it actually looks like a piece
of pooh.
After that we talk a
lot about how to defeat Shitty in real life. We talked about what has
made him strong and how to starve
him and make him weak. We talk about me thinking of my Dad and what sort
of advice he would give me about what to do when things get difficult. I
say I think my Dad would want my mum to be stricter, and not go to bed during
the day, and to make dinner for us. My sister thinks this seems silly, but
she still joins in talking about how to defeat Shitty and she admits that
he gets to her as well.
When we are finished at the Family Unit and we go home I leave most of the Shitty lump of plasticine in the cupboard in Steven’s office, but I take a little bit home with me to remind myself that I have control over Shitty and that it won’t get control over me again.
Steven
I think that this is a good example of how to make a social panorama and then use it in a more creative way. I think that my task as a family therapist is to talk to the child and family in a way that encourages their imagination and stimulates their creativity. This work is based on the idea of externalising the problem, but the way this is done has to be spontaneous and unique. Trolls are an established part of Norwegian culture but this anger troll was created by the boy himself, and he demonstrated the troll’s influences on his life in answer to my questions. As far as I can see the important change that occurred here was that Erik stopped looking at himself as a bad boy and a lost case and started seeing himself as a good boy with a big task on his hands that he needed help to achieve. Erik’s father had hardly been mentioned in the family after his funeral. I these fishing communities life has always been hard and it is quite common to deal with tradegy by not talking about it. There is a deep-seated suspicion that talking about bad things can cause more bad things to happen. Yet it was bringing the boys father back into the family’s life that enabled them to bring about important changes. I visited the community three years later and there had been no more serious problems around Erik.
Moreno
Well I do think that this is more interesting. The first thing I should like to comment on is that I see that there is a progression in this session from warming up, through an action phase and on to closure and sharing. These are the three necessary phases in working with groups, including family groups. In the warm up phase here the participants are introduced during the panorama. In the action phase Erik, the protagonist, presents his dilemma to you all and a struggle against a mythical antagonist is acted out with the assistance from a good helper, his father. This drama proceeds to a resolution where the antagonist is defeated and little boy gains more control over his life. After that there is a discussion about how to relate this symbolic struggle to the everyday life of the family, and this is very important.
Now I will to say something about another of my principles; using surplus reality. Let me explain what I mean by surplus reality. If you think about the way you are experiencing a situation, that is your personal reality. Now, think of all the ways in which you are not experiencing that situation, but in which you could be experiencing it. That is the surplus reality. You could, for example, be experiencing it as a fly on the wall, as Nelson Mandela or as the God Thor. In the theatre the stage is a magic place. It is both limited in its dimensions and limitless in its possibilities. The laws of science and of men can cease to exist on the stage. Animals can talk, time can go backwards, and dead people can come back to life again. A person can play out their dreams and nightmares, their past and their future. They can take the realities of a situation and then go onto the alternatives, all those things that were not said or done, the surplus reality, as I call it. And why should a person do this? Because within surplus reality are new and creative alternatives to the difficulties that weigh us down and drain our energy, steal our hope. Now in your example when you drew the plan of this little boy’s classroom, then you made a stage. On the stage he used the figures to demonstrate to you, and to his mother and sister, this incident which had turned out badly for him. But this time the enactment included two elements that are taken from surplus reality. The first is this externised problem, the anger troll which he calls Shitty. It is when the boy brings this creature into being he achieves a focus for his struggle. His dilemma has been until now that he has been his own antagonist, and how can he engage in a struggle with himself? He can’t, so he continues his bad behaviour. Now he has an antagonist and the struggle is possible. The second element is the boy’s father who has been dead for some time. He has kept his anguish to himself for a long time and has expressed only anger. He has come into a role that is not good for him. In this enactment his father is now not the source of his pain but becomes his accomplice and his mentor in this struggle. He becomes a resource in this boy’s life again.
The boy has been stuck in the role of an aggressive victim. Through his father’s reappearance he can leave this role behind and take on the role of the heir of his father’s values, which he had been learning before his father’s death. The first roles that people develop are a result of the organisms needs for survival and safety. I call these somatic roles. When children become aware of other people they begin to imitate them and eventually through interaction they learn new roles, such as the role of the mother and the daughter. Hopefully they become proficient in these roles and they are increasingly free to be spontaneous and creative in them. However they may have problems with the roles, some roles may be underdeveloped where as others are overdeveloped. Then the person will be stuck in the repetition of patterns of behaviour that are often inappropriate and harmful. This is what has happened to this boy. His roles of pupil, friend, son, brother are all suffering under the domination of the role of angry victim. Likewise his mother is not fulfilling her role as head of the family but is overwhelmed by helplessness.
Now, the big difference between the way you work here with your social panorama using the little dolls is that no one goes into the roles of the other people. There is a kind of puppet theatre, but no one is being asked to discover what it is like to be this other person. This is how I have described my method:
A meeting of two, eye to eye, face to face.
And when you are near I will tear your eyes out and place them instead of mine and you will tear my eyes out and will place them instead of yours,
then I will look at you with your eyes and you will look at me with mine. (Moreno 1959 p.7)
It is so important that a person is able to see themselves through the eyes of other people if they are to get on together, if they are to survive. It is true that in your method people can demonstrate their view point to others, but the next step of experiencing what the other is experiencing is missing, and this is the most powerful way of increasing tele.
In psychodrama we have the mirror technique which has some similarities to your method of working (Moreno 1959 p.53). If the protagonist is having difficulties being creative and spontaneous on the stage and there is little movement in the psychodrama then may I ask him or her choose an auxiliary from the group to play the role of themselves. Then I take protagonist off the stage and the situation is replayed with them as a spectator. I then ask them to describe what they have seen, ask them about their thoughts and feelings about this and ask them to give themselves some advice. Here they are lifted out into a meta-position and it seems to me to be similar to the position in working with the dolls.
I would stress that if the mirror technique is used in a psychodrama it is done so sparingly, and that the purpose of this meta-position is to enhance the work with role reversal or encounter.
Steven
As soon as I came across the mirror technique I thought that it is quite like looking at the figures with Family Dialogue Set. When the children are setting out the figures and talking about them they can identify with them quite strongly. It seems to me that the awareness of the children can go down among the figures, so I sometimes ask them to sit back and have a look at the social panorama and ask them what they think about it.
In Family Dialogue Set there are
fantasy figures, a fairy, a clown, a fortune teller and a robot. When the
children are looking at the social panorama they have set out I ask them to
choose one of these as a magical helper. The clown, for example, can make
people happy. So I ask a child which of the figures the clown would choose
to help and what he would do to bring them some happiness. I remember another
little boy whose father had died said that the clown would give his mother
some flowers and chocolates because that was what his dad used to do every
Friday and that always made her happy. A little girl had the clown arrange
the members of her disharmonious family into a semi-circle and taught them
to sing a song together. The child is able to project their hopes and wishes
for the future through the magical figure and their parents can also get a
view of the child’s ideas thoughts and fantasies. This gives new information
to both the parents and the child as ordinarily we never see a representation
of our social network, or social atom, and new insights can come because we
are looking at something familiar in a new way.
I also think that when a child makes a social panorama they are not just transferring an image that they carry in their heads onto the table. It seems to me that when they are making it they are discovering something they have not been aware of, they creating something not just transferring it. Children and families often comment that what they see is very surprising to them, often not what they could have expected.
All the figures have the same facial expression and some children have said that the figures look too happy to represent people who are sad or angry. It might seem that they do not carry emotions well. I have suggested to the children that they change the faces by drawing on them with a felt-tip pen if they want to, or that they can put a coloured disk under the figure to show how they feel, or that they can just pretend that the figure looks sad, angry or whatever. My experience is that children are very clever at putting something of themselves into the figures; they almost give them a breath of life. The children I have interviewed tell me they can see themselves and others in the figures. They can feel that the figure is them, and the other figure is their mum, a kind of role reversal. They can project thoughts ideas and interactions into the figures and it does not always matter that the figures are just standing still because they can come alive in the child’s living stories.
I have also been thinking how I can bring the technique of role reversal into work with Family Dialogue Set. The idea I have had is to have a special pretending chair in my office. When a child is making their social panorama and it seems to me that it would be a good idea that they reverse roles with one of the people who is represented by a figure I can ask them to sit in the pretending chair and pretend to be that person. Then I can interview them in that role and let them have a role reversal dialogue with the child. I think this would give a very interesting double position, having the ability to move from looking down at person in the social panorama, and then to look through their eyes in a role reversal.
Moreno
When you talk about these things it sounds as if all children are alike, and this is not the case. When I wrote about a person’s ability to be spontaneous I described an s-factor. This varies greatly between people, and although it is generally higher in children than in adults, some children will require much more warming up than others. So what you are saying about children being able to breathe some life in the figures is, I am sure, more true for some than for others.
The fantasy figures are clearly an example of using surplus reality, and this I like. I do wonder at there being just four of these figures and why you have chosen just these ones. I could think of many others and I think the children would like to make their own choices. There may well be modern myths they would choose from. Even though I have been dead for 30 years I seem to have heard of a certain Harry Potter, for example, and I believe Tolkein’s Gandalf has become very popular.
Lastly, concerning the pretending chair, I think this is a good idea. At last you will be helping people to get inside the reality of the other person and see things through their eyes.
Steven
You are of course correct that I have painted a somewhat idealised picture of working with the set. Some children I have worked with have felt that they have been forced into the situation and they have been uncooperative. Some have felt unsafe or uncomfortable in the situation and have been very guarded about being open and sharing information. They have made their social panorama very quickly and have been unwilling to talk about it. There are some youngsters around the age of 13 to 15 who can feel they are being treated like children when they see all the Playmobil figures. I have found that if you tell them in advance that this is a way of working that uses Playmobil figures, but it is certainly not child’s play, it is a way of gaining interesting insights into a person’s situation, then they do not object. One fourteen year old I spoke to recently said “It seemed a bit strange when I first saw all the figures and I thought “Are they going to try to get me to play with them?” but once we started I soon forgot about that and I found it useful and interesting”.
Finally I do see that psychodrama is a very exciting way of working, usually when I am working in my office there is just me and occasionally I may have a colleague with me. It would be difficult for me, in my present working situation, to gather a lot of people together to run a psychodrama for a family. These figures always I have here in my office and I can bring them and show them to the family and use them at any time. If necessary I can carry them in a case and take them to their home or where ever. I cannot do that with psychodrama. This is an alternative to a working situation where I have no theatre or large room nor people to call on. I still have these figures that sometimes can come alive and be my actors.
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