ABSTRACT
The process of sharing in the method of psychodrama is an essential component of its task. This chapter will explore how the process of sharing occurs, what form sharing may take and the director’s response to that process. Classically, a psychodramatic enactment has three stages-the warm-up, the action and the sharing, with the appropriate intensity of work attached to each phase. So it is not surprising to find the chapter on sharing at the latter end of the book. After the psychodramatic enactment, the participants are invited by the director to ‘share’, verbally and non-verbally, feelings, thoughts and associations to the enactment that has just taken place. It can be done in a number of ways. Most commonly, the action or scene setting is disbanded; any props, e.g. cushions, toys, that have been used in the scene for significant objects (for example, my first teddy or a bag of anger) are deroled-that is they are clearly described as what they actually are; the group reassembles in a circle, as it began, to recreate the ‘action’ of the group process. The protagonist and all auxiliaries are included in the circle as a way of reinstating each individual as a group member. Sharing takes place face to face across the circle. Should the group be very large and unable to make a workable round, the protagonist may remain on stage next to the director. Members of the group are invited to come up on to the stage with their sharing. If this is the method adopted, it is important that the protagonist is then re-established within the group as a group member and reasserts his or her own identity. The essential part of the sharing process is to facilitate a single protagonist-centred enactment into a process of group psychotherapy.
