thoughts on tele

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Psychodrama Colleagues,

    Open to some feedback on some ideas recently--- about 6 paragraphs if you're interested: 

Contemplating self, identity, relationships, it occurred to me that the word, "identity," refers to a phenomenon that has two parts: The social philosopher George Herbert Meade around the early 1930s made the distinction between the I and the Me, the latter involving what I think (left brain) and have been culturally conditioned to imagine as myself, my boundaries, what aspects of me are relevant. The I is the subjective looking-out/in, subjectivity. 

This morning I realized that the sense of it being me that is looking is not necessary; awareness can expand and contract to involve just a sense of what is happening. There need be no awareness that I am present. One can be vicariously enjoying of a loved one's enjoyment, the experience can be deeply pleasurable, even without any reflection about whether the "Me" is getting any, is benefitting, etc. Extending this, the experience of the event may become the source of enjoyment or passion, as through an absorbing television or sports program, book, whatever. The loss of "self" in such conditions is only the loss of self-consciousness.

Being swept up in a team experience (or in a battle in war) can shift the sense of self away from personal self and towards the success of the mission and safety of one's buddies. Spiritual experience can also involve a shift of emphasis about what is important from the Me to the Greater Becoming. Sometimes that's a "We" and sometimes it really doesn't matter if the Me is technically part of this or not. (This is one way I'm beginning to contemplate my own mortality and limitedness.) 

Turning to Moreno's theory of tele, I suspect that this concept overlaps with his intuition that we exist in broader resonant mental energy mind-fields, social fields, or fields of increased morale or purpose of one's group. One resonates with the sense of feeling scattered and alienated, variably conflicted or coherent, feeling paranoia or trust.

Are these part of tele or do they deserve another more specific term? All of these experiences clearly overlap with but aren't exactly the same as they dynamics of rapport, interpersonal preference. Nevertheless, one of Moreno's desires was to draw us toward an increased sensitivity to our social being-ness, the degree to which we transcend the boundaries of our skin-selves and participate in an psycho-social dynamic that is non-material, but still as "real" as our physical behaviors.

Part of the problem is that our expansion into or out of this psycho-social field varies with role and mood, but especially with a variety of psycho-social factors:

- how new are we to a network, how well-known or obscure are we to others?

- how much do we feel we have anything to offer, or anything "they" desire, or in other ways do we have the skills to become better connected?

- how competitive is the system, in terms of skill, money, or other criteria, and do we feel we have the wherewithal to advance at all in this network, or even hold whatever status we have?

- how congenial is the network with other roles, attitudes, and qualities that we have? How much do I have to or even can keep these other facets of my life separate or secret?

- do I know one or a few people who are trying to draw me in, help me, or contrariwise, keep me out? 

- and so forth. 

What I'm getting at is that tele and sociometry is only the opening to a very complex field, analogous to how the field of, say, immunology has grown vastly more complex in the last forty years. Tele in its narrower definition is about rapport, I think, but I suspect that Moreno was also trying to talk about his intuitions of the wider field of sociodynamics.

warmly adam 
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