Recently in Pyschodrama Category

Oh, well. It is the last psychodrama weekend of the year. The topic is sociometry. That should be fun.

So, I'll not be doing any marking until Monday.

This is a copy of an old article on sociodrama...

Mescon, Michael H. (1959). Sociodrama and sociometry: Tools for a modern approach to leadership. Academy of Management Journal, 2(1), 21-29.

Sociodrama and sociometry: Tools for a modern approach to leadership
Michael H. Mescon
Rich's, Incorporated, Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract: Professor Mescon's basic object in this article is to present a summarization and analysis of these techniques as tools of leadership rather than to introduce new and unique applications of sociodrama and sociometry. This he does in an unusual and interesting manner, describing how industry, the military, and other organizations may use these techniques in discovering potential leaders, in selecting individuals for certain key positions in leadership training, in determining the probable behaviour of employees in certain social situations, in the training of foremen and shop stewards, and in sales training programs.

I've another psychodrama workshop tomorrow. They seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment. Tomorrow we are focusing on the Canon of creativity. Just to warm myself up to the work, I thought I'd spend a few moments reading and thinking about it.

This is very briefly talked about in

Moreno, J. L. (1955). Canon of creativity: Analysis of the creativity chart. Sociometry, 18(4), 103-104.

and is shown diagramatically as:

I hope to fill in the detail of what this all means after the course. This diagram represents the interplay between the cultural conserve and sponteneity (that's awefully like the interplay between the forces of institutionalism / habitus / etc. and individual agency).

For Moreno, the cultural conserve are the routinised patterns of behaviours, especially in a group, that provide a sense of stability. Of course the problem with this is that the way in which we respond to new situations, aka sponteneity, is thus limited by our reliance on these ingrained patterns of response.

If I learnt anything over the weekend it is the way in which one becomes unsettled as tentatively attempts are made to break out of the cultural conserve (what was referred to as cracking, but I think that is a local term).

I spent the weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) on a Clinical Psychodrama course. Nothing much (clinical) happened.

I've was reading Wilson, D. C., & Jarzabkowski, P. (2004). Thinking and acting strategically: New challenges for interrogating strategy. European Management Journal, 1, 14-20. It talks about many things, of which I Will say more later, but I was intrigued by the references to an article by Emirbayer Mische. So, I got a copy - all 62 pages, and have spend the past four hours or so reading it.

Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 4, 962-1023.

The abstract says:

This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its ?interational? or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a 'projective' capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a 'practical-evaluative' capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment)

But that hardly does it justice.

This is a marvellous synthesis and reconceptualisation of human agency. It's clear why Wilson & Jarzabkowski (2004) used it in their EMR¹ article .

I particularly liked the article for two reasons. Firstly, it situates the concept of agency in history. This represents one of my own personal peccadilloes -- I always like to know the "story" behind something; it's one of the way I make sense of things. The range of ideas the article draws on is impressive (even considering its length): Turner, Bourdieu, Parsons, Mead, Weber, Lacan, Aristotle, Kant, -- all the usual suspects. The trick is the skillful integration and synthesis of ideas.

For me this has to be the definitive article on agency. Five stars!

As I was reading the article, I had a sense of strong links with the underpinnings of psychodrama. After all, much of psychodrama is about being more agentic -- or as they² say, helping people to exhibit more spontaneity -- to be able to act in new (less 'routine') ways. If I had some time, it would be fun to try and do a point by point comparison between the article and psychodrama.

Talking of psychodrama, where is the new theory in psychodrama coming from? Is there any new theory. Most of what I read seems to be reinterpretations and expositions of the works of the masters³. (Of course, my knowledge of psychodrama isn't great, so I'm probably missing out on whole chunks of that literature.)

¹ Interestingly, I was made aware of the European Management Review as a result of an e-mail from the strategy-as-practice web site and e-mail list. There was a special edition of the journal (regarding strategy-as-practise) which was available free on the the Internet.

² Psycho-dramatists, that is.

³ J. L. Moreno and Zerka Moreno

I end up at a psychodrama class to night. I say ended because I only popped in to drop off some books to the library at ATCP. I'd had some confusing calls during the day about classes being on, so I went in just in case I was still confused (about the class being on or off). It was on.

It was an unusual class. I wasn't really expecting to attend class I wasn't warmed up (in the way that I usually am) for class. I was strangely disengaged. Of course, that could be related to the other things that are going on for me. But I did leave feeling somewhat unsatisfied. All the more so, because Vivienne had challenged me with a line like "Are you getting what you deserve? Are you going for gold in your life?"

I found these two seemingly simple questions difficult to answer, and actually, I didn't answer them in any meaningful way. I recall that I called my answer "unstatisfiying". It was then, and it still is now.

Having slept on it for a while, it occurs to me that I tend to take two different roles. Firstly, there is the happy rambler, cheerfully wandering through life, finding enjoyment in most things. Secondly, there is the focused achiever, determined reach whatever goal he wants. The interesting thing is the focused achiever sometimes pretends to be the happy rambler (especially, when things aren't going as expected), and sometimes the focused achiever is subsumed by the other.

I suppose that only having these two roles is limiting, so I wonder how my role repertoire in these areas can be expanded.

Judith McMorland and I have decided to run a short seminar or workshop for Post-grad students, Doctoral candidates, and staff. The title of the seminar is Exploring the year ahead: creating responses to challenges and change and the flyer promises:

An experiential participatory workshop for PhD and Masters students journeying into ?unknown territory? of postgraduate study (thesis writing, data gathering, interviewing, maintaining self, holding it all together?). We will identify typical and specific challenges and changes and explore ways of devising enlivening responses.

The basic plan is to do some role training. And before you ask, what's role training:-

Role training is an effort to help us perform adequately in future situations. It is a method of learning that aims to bring about a rise in the spontaneity level of an individual and combine this with practice of a new expression. Making an apparently minor change in an area of our functioning, which we recognise as a role or part role, can result in a ripple effect in a larger sphere or system. Role training focuses on the development of one aspect of a role, but has in its larger view the transformation of the groups and culture in which we live. Wellington Psychodrama Training Institute.

Anyway, at the bottom of the flyer is says that I'm a sociodramatist in training. So, I shouldn't be surprised that some (thanks Karla) has asked "what's a sociodramatist"? So, as a trainee, I suppose it would be generally a good thing if I briefly outlined what sociodrama is about. Firstly, let me start by saying that sociodrama is not intended to be the therapeutic; whereas psychodrama, which is from the same stable, is intended to therapeutically useful. Thus, the sociodramatist tends to work more with typical roles, e.g. a student who is Peter, rather than psychodramatic roles e.g. Peter as a student. Secondly, sociodrama is an action method - there is a lot of "doing", as situations are enacted out at various levels of abstraction and concreteness.

The sociodramatist is concerned with the social networks of the protagonist; and so overall the sociodramatist seeks to improve the efficacy of people in groups. It is a method that helps one work with groups - this is probably a gross simplification, and perhaps those who are more experienced would say it differently, but it is my current working definition.

I've been doing sociodrama for a little over a year know, and I am slowly 'getting it'. But, I suspect it will take many more years before it really makes sense; hence the title "sociodramatist in training".

It's Moreno, not Monroe. I just got one of his books out of the library. It's:

Moreno, J. L. (1978). Who shall survive?: Foundations of sociometry, group psychotherapy, and sociodrama (3d ed.). Beacon, NY: Beacon House.

Quite a weighty tome - it's about 750 pages long, so it will take some time to read. I'll try a leave notes hear about the interesting bits.

Well I've signed up for an introductory course (well they call it the Core curriculum) in psychodrama. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I know relatively litte about psychodrama, other than what I've read and the fact that Judith McMorland has demonstrated it a couple of times.

Any way the first class is to night, and continues tomorrow and Sunday. There are four experiential weekends like this through out the year, plus a number of evening sessions.

There should be nine of us on the course (myself included), and out of the nine the majority (7) are women. I wonder why that might be.

Really, I should spend sometime reading up on J. L. Monroe, who seems to be the founder of the method. Surpising, though, a quick search of the Internet throws up nothing of use - there are just too many Monroes out their.