Sociatry: The Genius of Moreno

[Edward Schreiber]

Greetings,
I am preparing for the first of a series of training-education  
programs on a sociatric understanding and application of the Morenos'  
method.
Here are some amazing thing that they wrote about, all a aspect of  
the foundation of our work.  I am so moved with their insight I just  
wanted to
share this.
Best,
Ed


You reach a dimension which is beyond subjective and objective reality.
It’s a kind of cosmic reality.
You reach a third dimension in the experience of time, that of  
eternity or timelessness.

Zerka Moreno
Psychodrama Surplus Reality and the Art of Healing



The Problem

The discovery that human society has an actual, dynamic, central  
structure underlying and determining all its peripheral and formal  
groupings may one day be considered as the cornerstone of all social  
science.  This central structure – once it has been identified – is  
either found or discernible in every form of human society, from the  
most primitive to the most civilized: it is the genesis of every type  
of society.  In addition, it exerts a determining influence upon  
every sphere in which the factor of human inter-relations is an  
active agent – in economics, biology, social pathology, politics,  
government and similar spheres of social action.

Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society
JL Moreno



Shifts in power from the few to the many or vice versa can frequently  
be observed within the structure of groups, in fact, they belong to  
its standard phenomena.  One of them has become known as the  
“sociodynamic effect,” the unequal distribution of emotional volume  
among members of a group, dividing them into sociometrically rich and  
poor.  We see frequently, especially in rigid, authoritarian  
structures that the volume of social power hinges upon one or a few  
individuals only, the majority remaining neglected or powerless, and  
that any extensions of opportunities for incoming choices, directly  
or indirectly (symbolic), private or collective, increases the socio- 
emotional power of a few out of any proportion. We have also observed  
that, as long as a social system rigidly maintains its social  
structure the form of the sociodynamic effect within it remains  
little changed.  At times a loosening of the structure takes place,  
the volume of choices begins to spread to a new foci, to new  
individuals or subgroups which had previously been neglected. The  
precipitating cause may be a social trauma which affects the group,  
some factor which decimates its crop of leaders, an economic war or  
call to arms, migration, sickness or death in the course of famines  
or epidemics.  It appears that the volume of social emotions begins  
to get a wider dispersion and under the impetus of what trauma a  
larger number of members of the group begins to share in love that is  
mobile.  In certain moments the sociodynamic effect changes from a  
narrower (authoritarian) to a wider (democratic) distribution of the  
social energy the group is capable of spending.  These are moments in  
the development of a group which are wide open for social change,  
either in one dimension only, say the axiological, or the economic,  
or the involvement may reach all aspects of society. This ripening  
first becomes manifest as a change of the sociodynamic effect within  
that particular group. From the sociometric networks comes then the  
voice of the people embodied in key elements that proclaim and  
request certain changes in the social order. But just as the  
loosening of the structure indicates a relaxing of the sociodynamic  
effect, and increased rigidity of the structure indicates a  
rehardening of the sociodynamic effect.  This hardening and  
crystallizing may have in its wake a relapse of the social order, a  
counter-revolution that is reflected in the sociogram by the sudden  
increase in the inequality of the tele distribution. One may ask:  
what are the causes of the sociodynamic effect?  The cause of the  
sociodynamic effect rests in all its forms – on the economic, the  
ecological, axiological or the sociometric level – in the  
differential character of human society itself.  The effect can be  
altered but never completely removed.
Who Shall Survive?   JL Moreno
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