Action therapists

[James Sacks]

I want to make clear for those who did not read the message from 
which the lines in the message below were excerpted that I am not 
critical of action therapists. Rather I am critical of any therapists 
that unnecessarily negate whole spheres of human capabilities from 
therapy.This was the complete passage:

  Psychoanalysts usually are people who are comfortable listening and 
seeing deeply into the meaning of what they hear. Some are brilliant 
at it. They are less good at doing, so and they hang back from it and 
may discourage it in their patients. Their passivity fits many of 
their personalities. We may be just the opposite and propel ourselves 
and our patients into action even when thinking and understanding are 
more called for. People are naturally drawn into professions that 
require skills they have and consider of less importance professions 
that especially require  behavior that create anxiety as we know 
psychodrama does. Psychodrama can frighten, not only patients but 
therapists as well. Our task is to acknowledge an help allay this 
anxiety among our patients and also among our colleagues.

As critical as I was of the '"words only" therapists, I did not want 
evade self-examination lest we fall into the "action only" mode. When 
a quasi-religious charismatic group leader uses psychodramatic 
techniques to lead members to preordained actions we find the seeds 
of Jonesville rather than mental health.

Traditionally, the attempt had been to impose passivity by placing 
patients supine on a couch with the single rule of putting in words 
whatever goes through their minds. The hope was that any impulses 
other than words would be be frustrated and instead be funnelled into 
language which could be understood and used by the therapist. As 
psychodramatists we know what occurs when action is included in 
therapy. Massive amounts of therapeutically significant material in 
workable form is exposed which would be very unlikely to arise by 
free association alone. Therapists can understand more than just 
words.

>Moreno once (or many times) said that you can put many couches on a 
>stage but you can't put many stages on a couch. The idea is that 
>there are many doors to the psyche. A person can move, talk, think, 
>emote, dream, effect psychosomatic changes, et al. Each door out can 
>also be a door in and we would foolish to omit any point of entry in 
>our therapeutic efforts. I do not think that he was pro-action and 
>anti-speech. After all, speech is a form of action, too, and he did 
>an awful lot of speaking and writing himself. It is just that action 
>had been specifically disallowed in the conventional psychiatry at 
>the time. There were growing Nazi and Communist movements in German 
>speaking countries so that flying into action before a great deal of 
>serious consideration was actually dangerous. But Moreno found a 
>good trick - pretending - or what we call psychodrama. It allowed 
>for action without danger.
Jim Sacks

Adam's message :

>  Jim Sacks said,in an email recently to grouptalk, 
>"[Psychodramatists may tend] to propel ourselves and our patients 
>into action even when thinking and understanding are more called for.
>Interesting. Point I think needs to be underlined is that there are 
>times when thinking and understanding, discussion and review, verbal 
>processing, not action, are more appropriate for the needs of the 
>client.
>         
>
>  Psychodrama can frighten, not only patients but therapists as well. 
>Our task is to acknowledge an help allay this anxiety among our 
>patients and also among our colleagues.
>         It is worth finding out what evokes wariness among colleagues...
>
>
>Adam Blatner, M.D.
>    website: <http://www.blatner.com/adam/>www.blatner.com/adam/  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090825/8929e60a/attachment.html>