Fw: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

[mkarp11444 at aol.com]

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-----Original Message-----
From: mkarp11444 at aol.com

Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:13:27 
To: Ronald Anderson<anderson4513 at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders


Both Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls took courses and workshops from Moreno and their work was greatly influenced by those experiences. Indirectly, you are coming home and full circle by using and integrating somehow both methods of constellation work and psychodrama inflenced by Satir and Perls. Or Hellinger was influenced by them, you say.. Did you know about Satir and Perls?when I was 23 years old, I saw Perls do a dream workshop at Stanford univ. In Palo Alto Calif.and watching him work I saw such similarities with psychodrama. In the question period, I asked him what is the difference between gestalt and psychodrama? He said," Gestalt is one to one therapy done in a group." How it has changed. He said, "in psychodrama, I think the auxiliaries get in the way." I think he saw bad psychodrama. In fact, as you say, the auxiliary role helps two fold. It helps the protagonist have an antagonist and provide external insight into the role and it helps the player see how he is alike or different to the role and it helps the group member to be more spontaneous in another role. I am convinced that profound learning takes place for all role players, the protagonist and those who play the significant others.  Yes, Ron, I would like you to see if you could find that tap of me as a protagonist with Hellinger.e
Somehow. It took place on July 6 or 7th to July 8th , London, University of Oriental and Asian Studies, Russell Square, 2006 I think. It may have been 2007, now that I think about it. Coincidently, Ron, I was born in Milwaukee and lived there until I was 6 and then my family, two brothers , mom and dad, moved to Stevens Point, Wisconsin where my dad had a family shoe store. I went to high school there and then to Madisonn University of wisconsin, undergraduate in speech pathology. I was lucky enough to have Carl Rogersw as my boss in a part time job rating psychotherapy tapes then to Columbia Univ., N. Y. Again in Speech Pathology and Psychology. Took a masters and then met Moreno in person. Read "Who shall survive" in Madison by accident. It was above my head in a study carrol. It had a section on working with stammerers in psychodrama which fascinated me and I aksed my supervising professor with stamerers if I could do some role playing with amazing results of fluency. They  played external roles like an angry old auntie, but I was intrigued to find out how the stammerer can play internal roles and become fluent because after the auntie role play, they would come back to theselves and stammer. That took me to N.Y. To be near Moreno and his ideas and by the by, to  get a masters. I studied with Moreno and zerka as my primary trainer in the theatre, Moreno was welcoming in his home at night for processing the days training,  5 years or so, was on his faculty at the public theatre on 78th and Broadwayn the Moreno Institute.  There were 7 of us, each for a diifferent night. Moreno was Friday night and Zerka did a therpay group before the public session which we students watched and played roles. At first I was a "floater" filling in for the absent director. There could be 200 people expecting Moreno and Zerka and they got me. He was travelling in Europe or S. America or somewhere. Many actors, musicians and writers would come to partake in live improvisation.  Woody allen would try out roles, as auxiliary, don't know if he was protag.n Dustin Hoffman and playwright Arther miller used to come. Film makers too. I made two films with them while I was therea fiction films, with psychodrama sequences.  Then my night was Tuesday, I think. We all had our own groupies who would come back again and agin to see us. The subject could be anyone or anything. The audience could be 8 or 200. One night we had Moreno upstairs with 200 and one of us, could have been me, downstairs in the theatre with another 200. The Village Voice usedd to advertise it as an alternative to Broadway. A psychotherapeutic evening or something like that. Moreno wanted a public forum to share "our normosis", his word, for the struggle to be normal. He felt the sickness of society was "compulsive conformity" In London we have a monthly public session in a Hotel in central London and 8 or so of us, trained directors,  take it in  turns to direct. Half the audience is usually new to psychodrama. Last Friday, in Athens, I did a four hour public session for 150 people which they seemed to love and want to repeat in May with even more people. Nice and exciting to do things for the first time even though I have been going 40 years. Today I have a cold and am staying in and sipping garlic soup and taking chinese medicine and homeopathy. Where do you work in .Milwaukee? In a clinic or hospital or privately. I have a lot of relatives there. They are the Karp, Kramsky and Laber clan. The world shrinks again.  P. S. We had a book launch in Athens for The Handbook of Psychodrama, edited by myself, Holmes. ad Tauvon, Routladge, N.Y./London, 1998, which has been published in Greek. All the best, Marcia Karp
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-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Anderson <anderson4513 at sbcglobal.net>

Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 04:59:25 
To: <mkarp11444 at aol.com>
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders


I am Ron Anderson, in the USA, and was exposed to Moreno in the 60's, doing an internship at St. Elizabeths
in DC, and workshops at Beacon.   I finished my TEP years later, under Carl Hollander, Kate Hudgins, and
Linnea Carlson-Sabelli.    I wear my trainer and therapy cap in Milwaukee WI.

Yes, I have also worked with Hellinger, just spent 8 days with him in Louisville KY.    Like Moreno, he is a
great experimenter, and I have watched him train with different ideas.    Hellinger was a priest running a 
school in Africa as a missionary.  He was also trained as a psychoanalyst, and came to the USA to study
Gestalt therapy in California and Provocative Therapy in Wisconsin.   He came to the work around holocaust survivors, seeing in his therapy how subsequent generations carry the trauma into future generations, and are affected.   He developed constellation work out of that mission, the sculpting of Virginia Satir, and the Gestalt
of Perls' students.   He was not influenced by Moreno directly, but his students who also know Moreno say
he picked up action sociometry out in the 'field of what was already known.'    This is the real bridge with psychodrama, as I see it.    He has been experimenting with placements onstage, the sociometric relationships, seeing what emerges from those positions, placements, sociometric distances, as creating a field of inter-tele,
that conveys an eternal truth.

I may have seen his work with you, but I would have to go back and see it again.   He tapes absolutely everything he does.   I can also look online to see if I can find that tape, if you'd like.   

Ron


 



________________________________
From: "mkarp11444 at aol.com" <mkarp11444 at aol.com>
To: Ronald Anderson <anderson4513 at sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 11:05:44 PM
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

Very interesting, Ron. Thank you for sharing your experiences. It helps me understand him better and puts me closer tothe work. Where do you do this work? I mean what country and in what context? With whom did you do your psychodrama training and in which country. Did you train directly with hellinger?you seem to know a lot about him. I have his home address in my address book and move past it from time to time and think of his work. Why is he so good with holocaust survivors? Is he a survivor himself? He was a priest, wasn't he? I liked gunther from germany, one od his disciples. I don't remember hsi other name.or was it hunter?hunter beumont was it? This was about ten years ago he was at the University of African and Asian studies here in London. About 200 attended thr weekend and it was video taped. Someone told me that my work with my adopted daughter and mixed first and second family of my husband Ken was on the tape of that event but I have never
 seen it. Have you? My son was called Jackson and daughter was mandy, Maureen and Poppy and another son Sam. Maybe the names jog your memory of it. Marcia 
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________________________________
From: Ronald Anderson 
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 15:35:35 -0800 (PST)
To: <mkarp11444 at aol.com>
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

Marcia,

Yes, it is my experience too that he can humiliate people in front of others.   He did so to my wife, in the same
way he did to that woman.     In the case of my wife, however, she came away stronger as a result, and it has
changed her in a way that enhances her.    She wanted to work on helping her schizophrenic son by a prior
marriage, and he accused her of being schizophrenic as well.....and that he wouldn't help her.    But after her
humiliation, she came away understanding what Hellinger wanted her to understand: that the WE is more important than her over against her pooor son.   And she has treated her son with more integrity and humility
since, and he has blossomed.

I don't know that Hellinger is that good to size up who that kind of provocation works with, and who it does
not.   But with those who have been humiliated that I have followed personally, it has worked to make them
stronger.   And I think he has this intentionality as well.   I have to remember when I change hats back and
forth between psychodrama and constellation work, that in doing psychodrama I am beginning with the
conscious level within my students or clients, working toward what is beneath.    In Constellation work I am
working with the unconscious, so that whether I outwardly humiliate my client---  for me shaking up their 
unconscious to prepare for a change, or I set their auxiliaries up in a scene--I am doing so on an intuitive or
soul level criterion,.....and will be beginning with the vibrations between the auxiliaries emerging from an unconscious level.

As to the issue of gays, Hellinger has changed his mind in the last few years about them, after working with a
group of them I believe in England.   I have heard him talk about how his assumptions about gays have had to change.   He does have the humility to admit his assumptions are wrong, when his phenomenonological work shows him wrong.   And today he does not care as much what gender his representatives are, though still makes a mental note in case it has meaning.   When there are a lot of representatives onstage, it is really easier for him to keep track when they represent the same gender.

Thanks, I'm very interested in psychodramatists' reactions to seeing constellation work.

Ron
 




________________________________
From: "mkarp11444 at aol.com" <mkarp11444 at aol.com>
To: Ronald Anderson <anderson4513 at sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 4:16:54 PM
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders

Ron, interesting contribution. Isaw hellinger work in london a few years ago. I was one of his protagonists and found it valuable though because I took a vibrant black lady in the audience to play my son, he insisted he must be gay because I chose a woman to play him. I said I come from psychodrama where gender isn't an issue in the choice of an auxiliary he asked me to choose againand this time a man although he apologised later about his insistence. It prompted me to ask my 17 year old son that night, by phone, if he knew I liked men. Hellinger wasn't sure he knew that. My son said, "yes, mum, I know you like men and I like women. Mum, are you in a workshop or something?" It made me smile. The next day he did impressive work with a holocaust survivor. Excellent. Then he made me angry and I stood up in front of 200 people and told him so. He refused to work with a woman who had signed up a year before to work with him on the death of her mother and on
 the relationwhip with her sister, who was in the audience.coincidentially, I had had lunch with the sisters and knew how warmed up she was. After lunch, she put herself forward and started to work with him which was a promise to her mother and was the year anniversary of her death. He didn't like the way she put her arm around the chair between them and said he would stop working with her because she wasn't ready to do the work. She appered shocked and humiliated. I was sitting with her sister and she was shocked and disappointed. I stood up and said I thought she was more than ready and that he had a responsibility to complete the work since she was warming up to it for a year. He siad he had a right ti work with whom he chose and he chose not to work with her abd asked her to leave the stage. There was silwnce and he began to work with someone else. I couldn't concentrate on it so I spent the time writing her a letter saying it was not her fault that
 he stopped and that another time will present itself in the guise of him or someone or something else. She told me she kept this letter on her fridge for months to soothe her humiliating experience. I had never met her or her sister before. I then wrote Hellinger a letter to his home in germany with my thoughts as a fellow professional. He wrotw back to say he reserved the right to work with whom he wanted and when someone indicates they arenakt ready, he doesn't work with them. I understand that and I do too but his manner was dismissive and there was no need for her to feel humiliated by the experiencen which she did. Maybe he was right, who knows, but the therpist shouldn't leave the patient worse off than when they started with the therapist and in my opinion, he did just that. Maybe he was just off balance, tired or using judgement I jsut didn't know about. I have no doubt that his work is formidable and helpful to many. In general, I was very
 impressed with constelllation work but it is hard to get the experience out of my head. Is he arrogant? Anne Schutzenberger, Moreno's oldest living student can't stand him. Thinks he is on a high horse. Any thoughts about my impressions? Marcia Karp

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-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Anderson <anderson4513 at sbcglobal.net>

Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 09:59:26 
To: Walter Logeman<walter at psybernet.co.nz>; list at grouptalkweb.org<list at grouptalkweb.org>
Subject: Re: A 3 protagonist drama and healing between the genders


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