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THE ESSENTIAL MORENO Writings on Psychodrama, Group Method, and Spontaneity byJ.L, Moreno, M.D. J.L, Moreno, M.D., 1889-1974 THE ESSENTIAL MORENO Writings on Psychodrama, Group Method, and Spontaneity byj. L. MORENO, M.D. Jonathan Fox, Editor SPRINGER PUBLISHING COMPANY • NEW YORK Copyright © 1987 by Springer Publishing Company, Inc. AH rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 536 Broadway, New York NY 10012 87 88 89 90 91 / 5 4 3 2 I Library of Congress Cataloging-In-PublicatJon Data Moreno, J. L. (Jacob Levy), 1889-1974. The essential Moreno. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1, Psychodrama. 2. Group psychotherapy. 3. Spontaneity (Personality trait). I. Fox, Jonathan. II. Title. RC489.P7M575 1987- 6!6.89'1523 87-20667 ISBNO-8261-582G-X ISBN 0-8261-5821-8 (pbk) Printed in the United States of America Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint Moreno's work: For Chapter 6, "The Role Concept, A Bridge Between Psychiatry and Sociology*' American Journal of Psychiatry 118, 518-523, 1961. Copyright © 1961, the American Psychiatric Association. Reprinted by permission. For the sections "Playing God," "Young Man in Search of a Calling," "A Life of Service," "Among the Prostitutes," and "Superintendent of a Refugee Camp," from Chapter 17 from Moreno's unpublished Autobiography, to Zerka 1. Moreno. Used with permission. For the section entitled "A Religious Experience" in Chapter 17: from Healer of the Mind, edited by Paul E.Johnson. Copyright © 1972 by Abingdon Press. Used by permission. And for all other selections from Moreno's works, comprising those from the books, Group Psychotherapy: A Symposium (1945), Psychodrama, Vols. 1 (1946) & 3 (1969), Sodometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society (1951), and Who Shall Survive? (1953), Beacon House, Ambler, PA, as well as the journals, Sodometry 1,3, 14, Croup Psychotherapy, Psycho- drama and Sodometry 3, 26, 28, and International Journal of Sodometry and Sociatry 1. Contents Foreword, by Carl A. Whitaker, M.D. vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii PART I: An Overview 1. Moreno's Philosophical System 3 2. Psychodrama and Sociodrama 13 3. Sociometry 20 4. Group Psychotherapy 32 PART II: Advanced Concepts and Techniques 5. Spontaneity and Catharsis 39 6. The Role Concept, A Bridge Between Psychiatry and Sociology 60 7. Notes on Indications and Contra-Indications for Acting Out in Psychodrama 66 8. Psychodramatic Treatment of Psychoses 68 9. Psychodramatic Treatment of Marriage Problems 81 V vi Contents 1Q, The Prediction and Planning of Success in Marriage 98 11. The Sociometric Test 102 12. Authoritative and Democratic Methods of Grouping 113 13. Thoughts on Genetics 122 PAET III: Protocols 14. Psychodramatic Production Techniques 129 15. An Experiment with Sociodrama and Sociometry in Industry 154 16. Fragments from the Psychodrama of a Dream 185 PART IV: Autobiographical Selections 17. The Man in the Green Cloak 203 Notes 217 Chronology of Jacob Levy Moreno 220 Bibliography 224 Secondary Bibliography 226 Index 235 Foreword The effort to understand the growth of the human individual as a whole rather than as a body or as an intellect or a social organism has been very difficult to clarify, Sigmund Freud, in his massive research, became con- vinced that the important issue was individuation—that the person became more himself the more he separated from the dependencies of childhood and was self-activating. Years later Fritz Kunkel described in some detail what he called the evolution of "we-ness"—the primary "we" with the mothei; the secondary "we" with the father or another significant other, and the tertiary "we-ness" with the social set. Thus a child moved, if you will, from the biopsychosocial (with the mother) to the psychosocial (with the father) to the social (with the community). In many years of working exclusively with families, it has gradually be- come a part of my belief system that the process of growth is a dialectic one. One cannot grow to be a full person by endless individuation because that produces isolation. One cannot grow to be a full person by constant depen- dent investment with the family because that becomes a kind of psychological enslavement. In fact, the dialectical evolution of personhood consists of an endless process of symbiosis and isolation, belongingness and defiance, or separateness. Each state contains anxiety; each pushes for an escape to the other side of the dialectic; and there is no resolution. There is only a gradual increasing comfort in the reverberations from one state to the other and back again. Jonathan Fox has made a heroic effort to put together the writings, philos- ophy, theories, and accomplishments of an important contributor to our understanding of this process of human growth—J.L Moreno. Dr. Moreno vii viii Foreword was one of the seminal figures in the world of psychiatry. He was probably more clearly responsible for the move from individual therapy to the understanding of interpersonal components of psychological living than any other single psychiatrist in the field, Jake had a combination of the hyopomanic qualities that made Karl Menninger such a remarkable contributor to the world of psychological understanding; the creativity of Picasso; and charac- teristics that made those who produced the theater of the absurd so invasive of our inner world. He had a unique ability to open himself to others. His preoccupation with spontaneity and creativity was only matched by his dedication to behavior, to action rather than words. He discovered that we are all actors on the stage of life, and at the same time he exposed a great deal of our endless stage phobia. He almost single-handedly discovered the power and significance of the Here and Now moment and the spontaneous creative encounter, and may well have been one of the originators of the movement to discover that words are not things but only symbols. His use of the theater patterns of role reversal, the alter ego, role playing, and role simulation was the beginning of his development of a theory of embodiment and enactment. He wrote very extensively about the struggles of grouping, triangulation, subgroups, aliena- tion, and domination. He wrote about the use of the social universe, about work, about play, about learning, about citizenship, and about the whole concept of the social atom and social space. He was also unique in being one of the first to develop the concept of the patient as co-therapist rather than the victim of the "helper" By this process he evolved the theory of spontaneity into a theory of action. He was tremendously significant in rupturing the dogma of culture and the modes of enslavement that were programmed by the family. As early as 1940 he was involved in an effort to understand the therapeutic triangles in marriage and the interrelationship of roles in premari- tal, early marriage, and kter marriage phases. Because of his openness and his freedom to transcend the process of the living moment on the sage, he developed the capacity to transcend stress and taught those people he worked with how to laugh at themselves (which Harold Searles calls the cure for schizophrenia). He did indeed work many, many years with psychotics— and with great success—in hospitals around the country, in his workshops, and in his own hospital and outpatient clinic on the banks of the Hudson. His move from focusing on the delusion system and the hallucinatory problems of the psychotic to the imaginary stage roles was remarkably valuable. Moreover; his pattern of participation included the free expression of his own belief system, which made his work such a personal experience for everyone connected with him. This book records not only Moreno's theoretical evolution of psychodrama, sociodrama, and sociometry, but also his understanding of authority and democracy. He extrapolated the processes of group dynamics just as Foreword ix Freud did with individual dynamics. One of the great qualities of this com- pendium is the presence of a great many long samples of Moreno at work, quoting in detail the give-and-take between him and the auxiliary egos, the patients and the audience-observers, Jake's status in the United States was somewhat limited because he spent a great deal of his time in Europe, where he is still revered and is the model of much of the group therapy work in the European Economic Community. He was an exciting man, with a wonderful combination of Genet, Fritz Redl, Freud, and Picasso, and this is an exciting book. It is not the usual book on psychiatry, psychotherapy, or psychopatho- logy It is a book about living, and the massive contribution of a true master. CARL A. WHITAKER, M.D.