structure, unity, generalizations2

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Ivo and others, 
     1. IB: For me it's a little bit uncomfortable to enter in this and other debates with this group without a feeling that I don't have the right to do so, especially when we are talking about the great Adam Blatner.
     ab: Please please don't idealize or elevate me. It makes me very uncomfortable. Certainly anyone can chime in. The only criteria I use is whether the ideas presented seem to be rational or plausible.  We must challenge the transference! 

     2. I feel like I am jumping well ahead of what I am "allowed" to. In a way I think I want to break some of cultural conserves around me that people don't even notice, but in another way I must respect the useful and honourable cultural conserves…it's a difficult ambivalence to solve within me.
      ab: Are there any conserves around you? Are there any on grouptalk, or do you project them there? Were some people in your background authoritarian? This is a good opportunity to give yourself a corrective emotional experience. Consider for starters that we will allow you to do anything you would allow us to do.
         This isn't just aimed at you. There are other newcomers who have been similarly shy, and assume conserves of in-group clique-ism. It is courteous to check, and I hope I can reassure you. 

     3. I'm a Portuguese, a 27 year's old man and I'm an Economist Researcher working in a financial institution (yes, I am following this financial and economical crisis!). But I feel, first of all, that I don't fit in that standard and stereotyped jacket. I am a thinker and intent to be a practitioner and what I feel is that psychodrama, sociodrama and sociatry could offer me that. Theory and Practice must form a strong link, as Yin and Yang form a perfect and harmoniously circle.
         ab: do you think we will stereotype you because you're in the world of economics? 
     I am also a little afraid of being stereotyped as a psychiatrist (who often have a poor reputation in the USA at least, I'm sorry to say); and because I live in Texas, where it seems people ask if I'm just like all the Texans who voted for George W. Bush... 

      4. IB: So I feel an outsider (and in fact I am), and I must apologize for that.
   ab: What if  you don't have to apologize. What if we welcome anyone who wil play with us, as long as they are not cruel to us?

     5. IB  However, I am in this web group with the best of my intentions as I really want to help to build a strong multi-disciplinary communication, promoting and spreading the wonderful tools that you have, that is a wonderful contribution that all of you are giving to the health of this slightly crazy world. Adam, I am a great admirer of your work (I am still reading all your material…which is great, I already told you that). So my reflections are just from a student of yours. I share Adam's concerns about the great ambitions and illusive goals about saving the world with some fixed specific methods, independently of their time, space, level, type of group, etc. We are "just" human beings, and we must feel our humbleness and limitations about what we can really deliver.

        AB: I don't object to having great hopes for the world. I have a few myself, in believing that our methods---applied role theory mixed with various Morenian methods---offer good tools for building an infrastructure of more mature and flexible consciousness. 
            It's just that merely talking about sociatry won't do the job unless we come up with more specific suggestions.

    6.  However, I don't want unconsciously imitate Moreno, I want consciously imitate him! And by that, I mean to have a grand vision, a grand goal, and a metaphysical stance to devote my life to. When Adam say "We should explore ways we can implement various models and create new one" who don't agree with him? But for what purpose we want to create those new models and new creations? What is the underlying goal?
       ab: My goal is neither too grandiose nor too modest. Helping people have tools. 
 Using our approaches to promote a variety of other causes, such as: 
        -- interfaith spirituality     -- social and emotional learning in schools and at work        -- sociodrama as a pedagogic method in education in high school, college, adult education      -- teaching mature adults and elders in lifelong learning programs about "psychological literacy,"     -- promoting playfulness and imagination (art of play)   --promoting various types of interactive and improvisational drama (at least 30 approaches mentioned in my anthology),     -- revisions in contemporary theology   and so forth.. 

    7.  We can use all the semantic that we want but we all want to help, to heal, to build a better world, so there is no fundamental disagreement. We all have an underlying motif, a metaphysical stance that moves us day after day. And I believe as bigger and stronger that vision is, the bigger the effort to move forward. Moreno didn't change the world, but he left is mark that is being followed by all of us. Utopia is needed, because it always represents the creative forces in action. When there is no utopia there is no creativity.
          ab: agree but with a slight emphasis on being not satisfied with general platitudes and pushing gently towards specific applications

    8. A great thing that Adam said was that there are no structures out there waiting to be seen – the myth of the given – but structures to be discern, always evolving in a co-creative process. But that doesn't mean that we, as human beings don't have pre-given predispositions and creativity itself is one of them, and whatever techniques psychodrama, sociodrama or sociatry will develop in the future to deal with a ever evolving world should always restore the spontaneity-creativity axis of the human being, and that is, I think, an ever-present endowment in all stages, in all cultures, in all epochs.
       ab: agree      also, agree with Jung's concept of archetypes... but how they're manifested can vary with culture... 

    9. IB  In our relative world, we shouldn't deny the absolute; in the complexity of our diversity we should recognize our commonality. That tension is always there, it's an ever-present tension; it's an ever-present paradox.    ab:  yes.  

10. The best for all of you,  Ivo    ab: and you too... adam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20081010/dab669a0/attachment.html