Healing World Trauma with the Therapeutic Spiral Model. Группа авторов
The role is a functional, usually observable, unit of behavior. The word “role” is derived from the bundle of parchment describing the actors” parts in the drama, which they held under their arms, literally rolled up. Understanding the greatest distinctions between human beings and other inhabitants of our planet involves us, among others, as role players.
Moreno presented a table of the categories of roles in 1946 in Psychodrama, Volume I, reissued in 1994 as Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy by the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. There are three role categories: Psychosomatic, Psychodramatic or Imaginary, and Sociocultural.
These categories are not mutually exclusive. To grasp their importance, just remember that the first thing a baby has to do to be able to live is to breathe—a psychosomatic role. Yet we have an enormous and growing number whose breathing is compromised by asthma and other bronchial and pulmonary diseases. Air cleanliness is absolutely essential for health. That brings this fundamental need into the realm of the sociocultural. For example, breathing smoke into someone’s face or nearby air is a genuine sociocultural offense, yet many persons do it and if a victim complains, the complaint is frequently not taken as seriously as it should be. We need only to be reminded of the danger of smoking. There is hardly any psychosomatic role that does not impinge, and depend upon, our environment. The roles of the eater, sleeper, walker, lover, etc. all eventually move from the psychosomatic into the sociocultural context.
Some psychodramatic or imagined roles—that of the hero, for instance—in order to be realized have to be socially manifested. They remain only pipe dreams otherwise. I know two men who, at age eight, began to dream about the role of doctor and engineer. Both realized their dream and were successful.
Shakespeare wrote, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them,” in his play Twelfth Night. But I believe that in any event, to fulfill it, there must have been at least a dream about it because how else would it have been recognized? But the hero role often results in disillusionment, sometimes with disastrous effects, privately and publicly. That is especially true if it is a distorted, malformed role, of which there are many examples. One does not need to be an historian or study history but only to look around us to witness how that can affect the entire world.
ROLE RECIPROCITY
We can make an analysis of almost any role to become aware of its implications, no matter which category it belongs to. Most roles do not exist in isolation, but are linked to counter-roles: there are no parents without children, no teachers without students, no therapists without clients, no slaves without masters, etc. In other words, we are all inter-actors with one another and it is precisely in this area that our problems occur and which concerns us in our work. Those of us who cannot do well in interaction suffer the consequences, as do their inter-actors. As psychodramatists, this interpersonal interaction is our focus. Helping people to change relationships is what we are called upon to do.
Even artists, composers, painters, sculptors, poets, etc., though they work under exceptionally isolated conditions, need to have audiences to complete their true mission. If not recognized by others, they are considered failures. And today they often work in partnership or even teams. Many have to die to become immortal by recognition ex post facto.
ROLE REPERTOIRE
According to Moreno, we all have a role repertoire. That role repertoire is rarely used in its entirety. It is potentially far larger than we are aware of. There are new or different roles to be found and used and they can be given “trial runs” in our work, before they are employed in life. Some persons just do it in life, such as starting a new career. Thinking in terms of our role repertoire means being alive to our role potential. It also means we can drop unsatisfactory ones, try out a different form, or leap to new ones as yet untested.
It is useful for us to take time once a month and take stock of our interactions with others based on our role repertoire, to see how well we are doing. Are there negative repeat performances or have we been able to change the shape of our role interaction, producing a new reaction to an old situation? If not, what do we need to do? Practicing new behavior can either be done in life or, if not possible, in psychodrama, remembering that it is linked to how one plays any role in relation to specific others. We may have to modify our roles in terms of the setting in which interaction takes place; one and the same performance under varying circumstances may lead to disaster. That is where spontaneity-creativity must enter.
The concept of the human being as a role player led to my investigation of how the new roles imposed upon us affect older roles. At the time of the Second World War, when the role of the Soldier versus the Civilian was constantly active in our midst (unhappily again being played out in our world today), I began to investigate that concern and published a report on the results in our journal Sociometry (1944).
The Five Instruments of Psychodrama
Classically, psychodrama consists of five instruments: the Director, the Protagonist, the Auxiliary Egos (Therapeutic Actors), the Stage (or working space separated from the seated persons), and the Group. In this chapter I deal with the functions of the director interwoven with what is expected of the auxiliary ego, as I have come to formulate them over the years. These work as a team, not as combatants. The director leads but the auxiliary ego may come upon new information for the director to consider as useful or appropriate at the time or later.
Functions of the Auxiliary Ego
I think of people who take upon themselves the task of auxiliary egos as special humans because they put their own needs aside in order to be of use to others. The word “therapist” derives from the Greek therapeutes and means servant. What better way to serve can there possibly be? Remarkably, however, such work is unintentionally beneficial to us as well when we play an auxiliary ego role. It makes us fuller, more complete persons.
The first function of the auxiliary ego is to portray the role required by the protagonist in order to help to complete that person’s drama. It may be a human being, body part, a pet or animal, an object, a ghost, a voice, a wish, a delusion or hallucination or vision, or whatever is needed in the drama.
The second function is to come as close as possible to the perception the protagonist holds of that role, however bizarre it may appear.
The third function is, while in action, to try to feel out, like a social investigator, what is really going on that the protagonist is not dealing with openly, some hidden dimension or part of the interaction. I have learned, in that function, to say, “I have never told you this but…” and out may come what I sensed. The protagonist is at liberty to confirm or contradict. (I will return to this later.) As director, I give my auxiliaries a certain amount of liberty to be as inventive as possible, provided that this is of assistance to the protagonist, not intended to show off their cleverness.
The fourth function is to interpret feelings engendered in the interaction of which the protagonist may not be aware, which may be an extension or elaboration of the third.
The fifth is to be an instrument of guidance to the future for the protagonist, as when the protagonist needs to learn a change of behavior for example.
Classical Psychodrama Interventions
The Double
My own training in psychodrama began as a double to psychotic clients. The double is an old idea of the invisible being inside us. Psychodrama uses the double to assist in the exploration of the world, inner and outer, of the person enacting their life, who is the protagonist (Z.T. Moreno 2006). The double is a special function of the auxiliary ego in that the double takes on the identity of the protagonist. Because at one time we worked primarily with psychotic persons, the double was standard procedure. The director needed to learn what was really going on and the auxiliary ego, as double, became an interpreter of that inner world to the director who stayed outside the action. The double serves as a bridge between director and client. Doubling is not hard to grasp – after all, to whom do we talk inside ourselves when we are in trouble?
As a double, I was trained to stand, sit, or walk next to the protagonist