A psychodrama therapy group, under the direction of a licensed psychodramatist, reenacts real-life, past situations (or inner mental processes), acting them out in present time.
Participants then have the opportunity to evaluate their behavior, reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present and more deeply understand particular situations in their lives.
[2] Psychodrama offers a creative way for an individual or group to explore and solve personal problems.
It may be used in a variety of clinical and community-based settings in which other group members (audience) are invited to become therapeutic agents (stand-ins) to populate the scene of one client.
Besides benefits to the designated client, "side-benefits" may accrue to other group members, as they make relevant connections and insights to their own lives from the psychodrama of another.
[3] In a session of psychodrama, one client of the group becomes the protagonist, and focuses on a particular, personal, emotionally problematic situation to enact on stage.
[6] Disenchanted with the stagnancy he observed in conventional, scripted theatre, he found himself interested in the spontaneity required in improvisational work.
[5] In psychodrama, participants explore internal conflicts by acting out their emotions and interpersonal interactions on stage.
A psychodrama session (typically 90 minutes to 2 hours) focuses principally on a single participant, known as the protagonist.
[9] This is obviously beneficial for the protagonist, but also is helpful to the other group members, allowing them to assume the role of another person and apply that experience to their own life.
During the warm-up, the actors are encouraged to enter into a state of mind where they can be present in and aware of the current moment and are free to be creative.
Finally, in the post-discussion, the different actors are able to comment on the action, coming from their personal point of view, not as a critique, sharing their empathy and experiences with the protagonist of the scene.
Using role-play and story telling, children may be able to express themselves emotionally and reveal truths about their experience they are not able to openly discuss with their therapist, and rehearse new ways of behavior.
Classically, sociometry involves techniques for identifying, organizing, and giving feedback on specific interpersonal preferences an individual has.
[16] Moreno also believed that sociodrama could be used as a form of micro-sociology—that by examining the dynamic of a small group of individuals, patterns could be discovered that manifest themselves within the society as a whole, such as in Alcoholics Anonymous.
The focus of this exercise was not originally on the therapeutic effects of psychodrama; these were seen by Moreno to simply be positive side-effects.
[21] From 1980, Hans-Werner Gessmann developed the Humanistic Psychodrama (HPD)[22] at the Bergerhausen Psychotherapeutic Institute in Duisburg, Germany.
Hollander uses the image of a curve to explain the three parts of a psychodrama session: the warm-up, the activity, and the integration.
The warm-up exists to put patients into a place of spontaneity and creativity in order to be open in the act of psychodrama.