ABSTRACT
Psychodrama has been defined as a way of practising living without being punished for making mistakes. The action that takes place in a group is a way of looking at one’s life as it moves. It is a way of experiencing what happened and what did not happen in a given situation. All scenes take place in the present, even though a person may want to enact something from the past or something in the future. The group enacts a portion of life seen through the eyes of the protagonist (or subject of the session). The personal representation of truth by the protagonist can be eye-opening for someone else watching, who may see themselves reflected in the struggle to express what is real. J.L.Moreno, who founded psychodrama in Vienna in the early 1900s, described it as ‘a scientific exploration of truth through dramatic method’. Moreno (1953:81) had observed that thus far there was a science without religion and religion without science. He felt that the way forward was a combination; ‘A truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective than the whole of mankind’ Moreno (1953:3). Each member of the group is a therapeutic agent of the other. To be understood and held emotionally and physically by a group member who is not previously enmeshed in the story, can be a healing experience in itself.
