ABSTRACT
Psychodrama is a powerful modality in the psycho-therapies which has not had the widespread application its potentialities warrant. Psychodrama as a movement seems fixated at the curious professional phase in which a promising technique has yielded new insights into human personality and its enthusiasts then try to erect a whole theoretical metropolis along these few avenues of vision. This chapter discusses some of the uses to which psychodrama may be put, each desirable with certain patients, at an appropriate phase in treatment. It illustrates the use of psychodrama in bringing about affect discharge, in the service of clarification and insight therapy, in the exposure of unwanted identifications, and in therapeutic regression. Psychodrama has something else in common with the other psychotherapies. The chapter focuses on the self-observing functions of the ego, varieties of identification, including some which are unwanted, and deliberately induces regressions whose aim is the furtherance of treatment.
