ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what characterizes the co-conscious and co-unconscious states of mind, as defined by J. L. Moreno, presenting Moreno’s few texts about the concept, and the way in which this concept is used in psychodrama, based on contributions from selected contemporary psychodramatists. According to the theory of psychodrama, human development is organized on the basis of an infant’s relationship with others via role-playing, which takes place in the physiological, psychological, and social dimensions. The chapter presents the co-conscious and co-unconscious states conceived by Moreno in 1937 as an original creation within socio-psychology, since the idea of a relational and shared unconscious, currently referred to as social unconscious, emerged only in the 1960s. Co-unconscious states, defined by Moreno as the social unconscious, also encompass limitations and ways of remaining unknown to oneself, which are relationally constituted as an implicit modus operandi arising from an infant’s contact with its care-giver.
