catharsis of integration

[Bud Weiss]

Dear Adam and all:I have witnessed the most traumatized persons integrate it
all during a well run Constellation session. In fact, one of the people I
have produced constellations for, John L. Payne worked for 5 years
in Johannesburg South Africa as well as doing many constellations in Europe
regularly working with the most horrible scenarios including ones from
the Holocaust. I have never known of any more horrible circumstances than
those in South Africa let alone those of the rest of Africa as people were
treated worse than the most rabid animal.
Psychodama can go there as well if the director understands how to use multi
and intergenerational platforms and the process of healing or properly
orienting perpetrators in time and space ultimately to be healed as their
ancient ancestors surround them offering them solace for the awful part they
were thrown to taking. Unfortunately, most are not trained in any of  this
as far as I can see. Instead, most come from a background of learning about
abreaction and the 60s inheritance of beating each other up with pillows and
soft plastic wands.  Sorry to be so derisive and I really couldn't stand
seeing that sort of thing though I certainly did my share of screaming
cursing pillow beating and bad guy/woman disintegration before fully
grasping the lack of resolution provided in all of that.

I look to people like Karen Carnabucci and Ron Anderson with their training
in Constellations to bring the next level to our groups. I will keep on
working toward writing something about this and have too little direct
experience as a Constellation facilitator myself to be in any way
authoratative about it. None the less, I will work at it from the literature
and my experiences through many constellations as well as my
colleagial relationships with John L. Payne www.johnlpayne.com as well as
Francesca Mason Boring  www.allmyrelationsconstellations.com and others. Be
well all. Thanks Adam and Jim for commenting on my post. Best from Bud

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Adam Blatner <ablatner at verizon.net> wrote:

>  Good conversation by all.
>
> This from Bud was interesting: I think one of the traps of
> psychodramatists is to get high on the action part and not on the real
> resolution in which both specific actions and very specific healing phrases
> need to be uttered.  Too often, I have seen touted psychodramatists produce
> tremendous action with huge amounts of tears and sturm and drung without
> real resolution. The bad guys are punished, the protagonist stands up to the
> future ones and everyone applauds with some usual back references to Daddy
> or mom or grandparents who started the whole thing dismissing them after
> scolding them for having done such a terrible job. For me, there is no
> resolution until you have in one way or another healed all those you
> consider having been wounded by.. .
>
> Adam: I somewhat agree, in that I view catharsis as an emotional expression
> of different kinds of integration (as discussed in my article in the Journal
> in 1985 and in my Fondations of Psychodrama). A key concept is I think
> Moreno's own suggestion that every catharsis of abreaction be followed by a
> catharsis of integration. In other words, there's a release of emotional
> energy at re-discovering a part of onesefl that has been disowned, such as
> the sad or vulnerable or even strong, empowered part. But then the
> protagonist is faced with yet another challenge: What can be done with those
> parts. In the protagonist's earlier schema such roles were threatening,
> shameful, etc.--- so there's work to be done to re-frame those roles or
> parts so that they can be seen as potentially constructive.
>
> Another type of integration is what Bud suggested: The integration of the
> more mature recognition of who the other person was and why they might have
> been neglectful. The problem is that a person may need to go through weeks,
> months, or years of working through their own feelings of dis-empowerment
> and discovery of re-empowerment before they're ready to then ground
> themselves and consider the "reasons" for other people's disappointing,
> betraying, or otherwise frustrating or traumatic behavior.
>
> I agree that there is a kind of maturation evident in the capacity to do
> this, but many patients and non-patients aren't really ready to understand,
> forgive, or release. This doesn't mean that that more mature goal should be
> abandoned, but it might not be necessary to impose it on the protagonists
> when they're still early in the process, when the integration of the
> catharsis has at best only begun to be integrated.
>
> For people who aren't coming from the role of traumatized victim, but
> rather from a more neutral, healthy role, an interesting further kind of
> healing happens through expanding the circle of caring and extending the
> processes of greater consciousness vicariously, of imagining the healing of
> those whose limited consciousness led them to be hurtful. It's a little
> touchy, though, because some people who think they're ready to do this may
> discover that they continue to have more active unfinished vulnerable roles
> or deeper wounds or more sensitive "scars" than they had realized.
>
>      In summary, I don't think of psychodrama in its classical sense as a
> complete therapy that can finish up everything that is started. Rather, it
> needs to be woven together with other treatment approaches. (As an analogy,
> surgery by itself isn't curative, but requires pre-care and after-care that
> may be as demanding of attention, skill, and much more time than the surgery
> itself.)
>
> Warmly, Adam
>



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