role theory comments

[Adam Blatner]

Hi Grace and Hamish and others.
      I think role is a good language tool, collapsing many variables into one. I see some analogies between the function of a "note" in music and the function of "role" in psychology. It has the advantages of including many levels of being. 
     So it's a "whole way of being" in a sense, but also that may be a bit too general. A person can be committed to a role at any level, from 0.5% to 100%   So role distance is a variable. Some roles in my mind/feeling represent "shadow" complexes, parts of me that I don't feel strongly or let them live out their implications; some I do let be expressed in dramatic surplus reality; some I notice, acknowledge, and then contain; and so forth. 
       I am very very enthusiastic about role theory... and some day may expand the three chapters in Foundations of Psychodrama (4th ed, 2000)... maybe into a book... there are other papers on my website.plus bibliography.  http://www.blatner.com/adam/psyntbk/role-theory-bibliography.html
    
         I very much agree with the different ways of approaching role theory. There are many ways of classifying them, and the approaches used by Clayton, Daniels, and others---the recognition of the ways that some roles are still developing, some are mature, some are needing revision, which ones tend to be fixed--- these are indeed useful. Other comments about the degrees of spontaneity brought to the role, also useful. Have you heard of the idea of role taking (just putting on the external elements), role playing (performing the role with some understanding), and role creating (beginning to play with (explore and vary) the way the role is played (performed)---including even daring to explore how the role definition might be revised, re-defined, etc.  In a sense, this is a spectrum of skill development in many skill areas---e.g., riding a bike, climbing, etc.

    Further comments below:  Grace , December 21, 
     When I consider a role as a whole way of being (comments above) ... I don't get so caught up with the notion that it must be visibly 'enacted' or played out. (AB: excellent point! Yes!)
      From this perspective, those parts that people hide are still roles that have a thinking and feeling and not so visible action component.  (AB: what psychodrama does is often to help people by enacting the role to become more conscious of those role elements that are repressed---out of consciousness. Some role elements are suppressed because of wisdom and tact, though---see my paper on http://www.blatner.com/adam/psyntbk/fivelevelsawareness.html   each of these representing a deeper playing out of a given role relationship.)

Hamish writes: . . .I have been engaged by the thread also - and reflective about my own use of Role Theory.

    Congruent with a move in this part of the world I see roles as 'whole ways of being' - containing thinking, feeling and action components including motivation and values. 

      ab: yes! it is useful because it is a gestalt or complex that combines many variables. Yet it is not completely amorphous. If it could be enacted, even with help of psychodramatic methods, then it's a role. There are some abstractions and dimensions that cannot be enacted and i might be persuaded that those things are not roles. 

      And some abstractions would be enacted in different ways (and exploration of those makes for axiodrama), Different individuals and cultures might portray different ways of "loving," for example, or "sexual attraction," or "comforting."   



Hamish:  Perhaps this is not much of a change in some ways but it warms me up to appreciating the psychological complexity of what I might name as role.  I can at once appreciate the social function and effect of the role as it is enacted in a group and can come to appreciate the formation of the role in the persons history and personality (for example in a psychodrama).   AB: yes!

 

I guess in saying this i don't much hold with Moreno's original categories of somatic, psychodramatic and social.  I think of Moreno as creating an idea and a context and the many people who have come later as filling this idea out and integrating it more with related developments in social sciences and psychology. 

   AB: Agree!  His taxonomy was preliminary. It's up to us to continue to elaborate it! 



Hamish.. I really like his notions of the Matrix of all identity,    AB: I'd like to hear more about how this notion is used by you and others. 

     H:  doubling, mirrioring and role reversal as developmental stages.

            AB: I partly agree, in that elements of these methods and principles do apply for parenting skills; but as you said about original categories, there are many other refinements that also need to be integrated. 



  H: The gem to me is that, for example, doubling is both a developmental stage and a way of being I can adopt with my client or produce in a drama.  Similarly role is both personal and specific to the client and an element of the life of the group in the present.  To me this linking of social and personal is a valued aspect of Moreno's genius.   

      AB: agree

 

      H As a psychotherapist I find value in the notion that roles can be categorised as fragmenting, coping or progressive / generative.  I am sorry i do not remember the author that first created these categories however Max Clayton took them up and developed them. 

      AB: Interesting! I thought Max originated them, but perhaps not. Here's an opportunity for some medium-period history research! 



 H Coping roles seem to me to be related to what psychoanalytic psychotherapists call defences, i.e. ways of being that are defensive or self protective in orientation... 

      AB: Yes, I want to make this point in my presentation in April: It is possible to play almost if not all of the defenses as voices that are part of the double's role---so it should be part of the training of the trained auxiliary or double to learn this---and/also many of the internalized interpersonal games (described by Berne) and manipulations. The master game (in the sense of healthy play) is to learn to recognize these in oneself as well as in clients, and perhaps choose other coping strategies that are more inclusive or otherwise mature.



 On the other hand when Grace speaks of being Strength Based I warm up to the functioning form and working to strengthen progressive functioning....  ab: yes. 

 



       
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