Sociodrama and its potential for world domination
How did the British Govt end up cooperating with the IRA to bring about the changes in Northern Ireland? At one point it lay in the hands of a go-between priest who instead of saying “no!”, which was what he was tasked to do, he said “yes”. How did a group of opinionated independent high spirited people develop the American constitution? They hung in long enough to make it work. How did Vaclav Havel influence his companions? His timing and his message and his delivery could be heard. And he helped set up how he was heard. How did Nelson Mandela move from a jailbird to a leading international thinker and leader? He was not alone. He was steadfast. Others worked on his behalf. He is remarkable. How did the independent nations that were the countries in Australia relegate themselves to States and form a Federal system. A handful of men and woman travelled the country talking up a storm. How did that motley crew of early psychodrama practitioners, trainers and trainees collaborate to form the Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association? These changes took place because of many people. Certainly certain individuals played their more central roles and others more peripheral roles.
There are obvious questions around how we can learn to collaborate together in a more effective manner. There are many systems that have been developed that are designed for people to problem solve, make decisions, plan together, work together and develop new ideas together. So far, from my research, there are no methods commonly used or commonly available that: 1) individually increase a person’s capacity for thinking about a problem, acting about a problem, getting an expanded view of the problem, finding out other’s views of the problem on the individuals level and also; 2) create whole group experiences that reduces individual isolation, develops shared meanings, progresses in the here and now how groups and sub-groups think and reflect on an issue (create community) and also; 3) can be used to explore, develop ideas, brain storm, build in and build on other brain storming processes, other models and theories of living and also; 4) build on the human capacity to imagine and enter into imaginary spaces and places and ideas (surplus reality) and also; 5) have room for adding in or tacking on alternate models, ideas or methodologies such as de Bono’s creativity tools or other group ideas.
Moreno and others have posited Sociodrama as a problem solving exercise. Moreno wanted it used for inter group conflict – by this he meant inter-group conflict that had reached flashpoint. We are now in a time where due to the infiltration of media and information into all areas of life we are all aware of a whole range of inter-group problems and conflicts that are, at best, managed and at worst are left to politicians. We know about global warming and we are probably in a range of sub groups effected by these issues. We all know about problems with water. We know about problems with energy. We know about problems with the environment. We know about problems with food, weight and health. We know about problems with public transport. We know about problems with conflicting ethnic pressure. We know about inter-country issues. We know about issues of crime and punishment. We know about issues of prohibition (marijuana and others) and drug smuggling (marijuana and others) and drug growing (marijuana is the largest cash crop in the US and probably Australia as well). We know about indigenous issues. We know about the desire of action and the desire for inaction. We know that we vote for politicians who lie. We know about the problems of human rights. We know we want a peaceful life and an exciting life and a meaningful life and sometimes these wants conflict with each other.
To me this means that sociodrama is a method whose time has come. The description I have given earlier could as well be a psychodrama or a sociodrama. If used as a sociodrama then it can be used to examine, explore, investigate, and muck around with issues of interest and concern. As examples it could be used for:
1. Investigating the various subgroups and their ideas and responses to global warming;
2. Investigating responses to health
3. Investigating how to influence the government
4. Investigating how to influence the community
5. Finding ways to work together on areas of agreement
6. Finding ways to work together on areas of disagreement
I have found an amazing capacity for people in groups, with an adequate warm up, to enter into imaginal and imaginable realms, surplus reality in our language. If I give people a reason to try it out they will nine times out of ten give it a real go.
While I know that sociodrama does not hold a central place in the lives of most psychodramatists and psychodrama associations it is nevertheless our form for working in larger groups than we do with psychodrama. An example of my contention here can be seen from the number of books written on sociodrama as compared to psychodrama. I think the last one with significant amounts of sociodrama written in English was Zoltan Figusch's second book From one-to-one psychodrama to large group socio-psychodrama and before that Sociodrama and Collective Trauma by Kellerman and before that Ron Wiener's book of using sociodrama in organisations to do Creative Training which looks like it has been reprinted this year, woo woo! And then a break back to Who's in your shoes? by Patricia Sternberg and Antonina Garcia. These are the English ones there may be others in other languages such as Portugeuse, German or French.
As a larger group form, sociodrama has many purposes one of which can be solving a problem that is limited to the group I am working with. For instance an organisational group wanting to make changes or develop new ideas or develop their relationships further. At a community level it can be used to explore important issues for which there are numerous divergent responses and ideas. AND sociodrama has one other thing that is often undersold.
It has sociodrama training. Or better to say: we have sociodrama training. I have long thought that our training is the most potent thing we have. Sociodrama training is massively overlapped with psychodrama training. But I can imagine training people in sociodrama who want to make a difference in the world. How much sociodrama training would it take to make individuals more effective in this work with others? That’s a good questions and one that is largely unknown to me. But my journey has begun.
My imagination is beginning to get going in this area. And I have some groups in mind that could benefit from these types of training. These groups are the people who have a strong motivation to change the world and keep finding that the world does not want to change (neither do I or practically anyone else I know). These groups are the people who do not have any major, out of the ordinary, psychological issues yet because of their own motivations put themselves into positions in front of others, leading groups, leading individuals and influencing groups. There are many, many areas where these people operate. Such as: unions; grass roots groups of all persuasions especially the University student groups such as conservation groups and climate change groups; health groups; water groups; land care groups; political change groups; immigration and refugee change groups; human rights groups and others.
As an example: I recently attended a conference of around 500 people, organised by students, without any significant resources, who are motivated to develop sustainable practices in the world and form grass roots groups to do so. I presented as well. The average age was early 20’s. They were highly motivated, extremely keen, wonderfully naïve, open to engagement if not very good at engaging, thoughtful, intelligent, enormously polite, ran overly consensual group processes and for practical workshops one day went off to a series of protests culminating with a protest at a dirty power plant with a large labour union group. Recently they were running a simulation with 500 or so people as preparation for blockading another power plant. The simulation was done to prepare protesters for the shock of large unruly groups, overcome communication issues and introduce folks to the dilemmas of practical protesting. What else participants at such gatherings could learn? At the conference I attended a meeting of one planning groups and they used a spectrogram process to look at an issue of interest. It was done in an adequate fashion.
As a consequence of this and other experiences, I have become alert to the possibilities of sociodrama in the world, as have many others at this time. I have become alert to the potential job of training some of these groups and people, as my contribution to a better world. I am becoming more creative in finding ways to develop credibility with some of these groups. I am becoming alert to the possibility of expanding my ideas about the groups I could usefully work with and contribute to. Becoming alert is really saying in our lingo that I am developing a warm up to this area. That this warm up is assisting me to not see things in quite the same way, as some of my own conserves with how I could and should work, begin top fall away. I hope this blog stimulates some others to begin to be alert osimilar things and if you do then please let me know here or elsewhere.