A sociatric vision

[Adam Blatner]

Responses:
   JW in New Zealand:  I am reminded me how deeply I am seeped in the culture of academic 
learning, research, journals, medical model etc. and wondering how much of my struggle 
with psychodrama theory is due to my inablity to role reverse with Moreno and his culture.
       AB: Too easy a response. This whole business must be dissected meticulously. Moreno 
had many pretensions to scholarship, and also felt okay about dispensing with some 
scholarly conventions. We should not eliminate the possibility that he was a brilliant 
seminal thinker---a genius---while at the same time being a mediocre (at best) systematic 
thinker. His clear narcissism also made him shameless about the defects in his writings. 
Ed S. finds gems of brilliance in his almost Talmudically-careful studies of Moreno's 
writing, and I await his (Ed's) not just quoting them, but explaining why they are gems, 
how they are more than mere platitudes or overgeneralized aspirations. In my opinion, 
there are indeed some gems there and also some stuff that is more mixed.

JW: My questions about theory do arise in a medical model, academic psychology context. As 
in my earlier post I am looking for theories/ explanations for psychopathology and somehow 
even though I KNOW that these may not be psychodrama appropriate questions I can't help to 
try and work this out.
     AB: I agree with you heartily: We must be prepared to present our ideas in a coherent 
fashion to those who are not already bent on agreeing with us.

    JW  These are the questions that my academic colleagues (who are curious and 
interested in psychodrama) ask me. The clients I see are referred in a medical model 
context - depressed, anxious, etc.:
        1.  Phrases such as "social atom repair" as used in our recent ANZPA conference 
brochure are quite mysterious and provoked an interesting tea room discussion. Social 
atom, cultural atom,social-cultural atom. One construct or two? No two writers give it the 
same definition according  to one thesis I read recently, and how to explain it to a naive 
audience?

 AB: Social Atom and similar terms should be noted to be only mental constructs aimed at 
trying to describe the way people are embedded in their social environment. The wording 
here is very possibly misleading. Calling it an atom is problematical because there are 
many aspects of and associations to the physical - chemical concept of atom that don't 
fit. Pitirm Soroking criticized Moreno's concept this way, but I can't find the exact 
reference. Even my preferred phrase, social network diagram, is a little misleading 
because while the central character may be connected, and a few of the others variably 
connected with each other, most figures on the social network diagram don't know each 
other, so then it's not really a NET work, is it?

   Secondly, there is no network, any more than there is a "self" or an ego as 
differentiated from superego. These compartments are created as mental abstractions of 
organismic (non-material) dynamic wholes, purely for convenience in analysis. This is okay 
if we remember that these are temporary tools. The human body really doesn't operate with 
separate organs (lungs over here, heart there), but rather as an integrated whole---as 
does the mind, as does the person in the socius. The child psychoanalyst Winnicott once 
said, "There's no such thing as a baby," meaning that it is foolish to envision an 
individual apart from the profoundly interactive caretaker environment.

There are several ways of using the social atom as a diagnostic or therapeutic tool. One 
type includes the major attachments. (Who has been unintentionally omitted?) Another type 
extends this or modifies it: Who are the groups, collectives with whom one relates. The 
diagram can be used with a good deal of flexibility and creativity. It's a tool, like a 
scissors. There is no single right way to use it. As for definitions, say simply it's a 
map of the person in relation to his or her social matrix.

JW: If we are repairing it then is it broken?
AB: Metaphors, semantics, words. Hold these as tools, use when they help communications; 
put down and try other ways when they hinder them. Do not take any of this---and until I 
can be reasonably criticized with good arguments I'll say "any"---anything not only in 
psychodrama or in psychology---as literal, because the mind can not be treated like a 
thing. One might even go so far as to argue that no thing should be treated only as 
defined, because we continue to discover new frontiers (and surpass those frontiers) about 
what anything "is." (sorry for the venture into metaphysics.)
        But use it. Repairing a broken social network is not a bad opening title sentence, 
but there are a host of sub-headings:
Breaks that are irreparable. Neither partner wants to
Breaks that are reparable but neither partner knows how to
Breaks that maybe are... but more diagnosis as to what the nature of the break, hurt, 
misunderstanding, betrayal, mixed tele, etc. is about---and this can be quite complex. 
Each role component may need to be examined.
         One may find six healthy role complementarities, three of which can be brought to 
bear to heal the one or two incompatibilities, for example. But these, too, depend on how 
valued or important they are to either party, etc.
         and so forth..

 JW  how did it get broken or what goes wrong that it needs repairing? what exactly are 
you  repairing? And are you really repairing or simply adding to or increasing something 
else (spontaneity?)
         AB: See above. It's important that we not use sponatneity too casually as a 
panacea. More often than not it's a vague abstraction in the minds of those using the 
term. I no longer assume that my colleagues in the professions really know what they're 
talking about, because I've too often asked innocent questions for further explanations 
and receive in response that kind of annoyance that expresses the disorganized rage 
suffered by a narcissistic complex that's just been punctured.

JW  On the topic of roles. Should we describe roles from the context of the observer of 
from the point of view from the person experiencing them, or both if indeed in a drama it 
is all the internal world of the  protagonist?
      AB: excellent question: The advantage of role is that it is a most convenient tool 
when used well. Yet it can't be used for certain things. A spoon is great, but not a good 
cutting instrument. So, in your question, role is a tool for identifying a complex. It 
doesn't exist, and has no clear boundary. It's good for describing and discussing, but 
absolutely imprecise. This is because roles partake of levels, levels above and below in 
complexity (e.g. student: above: specific relations with teachers, more general relations 
with the educational institution, not-insignificant relations with the wider political 
institutions within which a school operates, culture, prejudices, language, etc.; below, 
temperament, psychophysical makeup, intrapsychic introjects --inner parents--- various 
conflicts with other roles (e.g., wanting to be out sailing), etc.)
        So we should not describe roles. Rather we should identify them as is deemed 
useful by the client, or by the therapists in a case conference, for purposes of 
understanding. So all angles you mentioned are appropriate depending on purpose of the 
interaction.

Saying it another way: It is impossible---absolutely impossible---to describe a person. 
There are literally hundreds of major variables and thousands of permutations, and a third 
of these are changing in intensity or quality even as we speak. So the delusion that 
psychology can describe anything needs to be confronted. On the other hand, for purposes 
of growing, learning, healing, temporary, provisional descriptions are better than 
swimming in an amorphous mush, and to this end I find role theory to be the most 
user-friendly, flexible, and suggestive language for psychology currently available.

JW: Does it matter?
   AB: Unclear on your question. Sometimes it is most useful to identify the factors. But 
sometimes it doesn't matter, because identifying roles or analyzing them may be irrelevant 
to what's actually needed, such as time to be quiet, without words; or opportunities to 
re-ground with presence.

  JW  At what point does the mean, critical, beastly mother become the stressed unhappy 
mother struggling to cope the best way she can or is that all one role?
    AB: Good question. The key word is "is." Nobody "is" anything. Everything must be 
approached in terms of identifying the relevant question. We're talking epistemology here, 
how do we know anything. In the olden days (last week?) lots of people thought that (1) it 
was possible to identify things clearly; and (2) if you knew what something "was" you'd 
know what to do about it. Both are untrue: They rest on the vague, childish desires to 
get, have, hold, possess, attain, be done with it, once and for all---and the cosmos 
resists this by being in continual flux and development.  Otherwise erudite people get 
trapped by this folly.
         So back to your question.
  There is a time in therapy when it is useful to help a client experience her 
victimization, to recognize the nature of the wound. Yes, in a certain sense, that was a 
beastly thing for mother to do.

      There is another time, after that, when it is useful to help a client transcend the 
victimization, to redeem empowerment and responsibility. In that phase, it's important 
(and often therapists miss doing this) to help clients role reverse and see their 
antagonists, such as the mother who delivered a mixed bag of messages for all sorts of 
reasons, as real people, because learning to forgive, release, and re-own the ability to 
self-nurture is what is needed next.

           (But perhaps I didn't understand your question?)

   JW  When a person is experiencing a role conflict are they in two roles or one? can you 
experience two roles simultaniously?
                 Almost everyone almost all the time are "experiencing" multiple roles. 
They're like computer sub-programs, with some running in the background, using up RAM 
space. I estimate that people live out about twenty major and a hundred minor roles at any 
one time along with about a thousand transient roles that kick in and go out in the course 
of a year. What do others think?
         Now as to what you "experience," that has to do with capacity for attention, 
scanning, inner sensitivity, focus, etc.
    I think the key to growth is multi-tasking, and more specifically being able to be the 
figurative director-playwright even as one is being the actor. Or being the 
actor-as-character even as the actor has some role distance so that she can play the role 
slightly differently in the next run-through of the scene. The cultivation of the choosing 
self---the meta-role, as I describe in my chapter in Advancing Theories---is in my mind 
the key to effective therapy.

JW  I know I have a lot of questions (some of which must seem quite odd).
          AB: You may or may not want to examine your external projections, why you think 
someone else would find anything you've presented even a little bit odd, much less quite. 
...    I thought they were pretty good questions.

JW  I don't really expect anyone to answer all my questions ...
      AB. Again external projections. I find this a pleasant dialogue and in turn am open 
to disagreements, probing further questions, and so forth. Nor do I presume to think that 
my "answers" will fully answer your questions, because (1) I may have misunderstood them; 
(2) you may have presented them ambiguously; (3) I might be simply wrong, or at least only 
partly right; (4) (and here's the best part), in any dialogue, as certain questions are 
posed and answered, new questions bubble to the surface: Ah, now I see that what I really 
needed to ask was...

  JW: ... and am willing to read
       (AB: please try to find my Foundations of Psychodrama or order it for your 
community's library)

 JW...  and notice and experiment and try and find answers for myself but  in Moreno's own 
writing I end up wading through heaps of material that leaves me none the wiser. I think I 
may be asking him the wrong questions!
         AB: Like the Talmud, I think that Moreno's own writings are the most obscure way 
to learn about psychodrama. More, I don't think that anything that he, I, Zerka, or anyone 
says should be accepted as authoritative. The field is young.

  JW   Perhaps I think too much and am prone to driving myself and others crazy with 
this!!
        AB: No, the correct diagnosis is that you think. This is abnormal. (It's a good 
kind of abnormality---normality being just what most folks do. Normality is not what 
should be one's highest goal.)
      Most people only pretend to themselves that they think, but it doesn't hit the 
discomfort zone. Consider the alternative possibility that you have a lively mind that 
naturally notices the inconsistencies between status and authority and what these folks 
have to say.
     The good news is that you will be on the creative cutting edge.
          The bad news is that sometimes it gets lonely, and you begin to suspect that 
some of your supports have feet of clay.
   Be assured, though, that there exist people who will delight in your mind and be 
available to encourage you! You may have to shop around, but they're there, and they're 
looking for playmates like you!

   Warmly, Adam