ABSTRACT
Many years of involvement with children have taught me that, side by side with their candour and simplicity, there can be found within them huge caverns of privacy and a quite complex need to keep at bay any adults who try to push past their protective barriers. This is doubly true in matters concerning their families. ‘It’s none of your business!’ they shout, with their eyes if not their mouths. And most counselling theories for adults taught at our universities and training colleges do not tell us how to enter this very private space. Through psychodrama, I have found a key. The more I have used these methods with children, the more aware I become of the brilliance of Moreno’s concepts. He has translated the normal play patterns of children into a complex therapeutic system for adults that opens human experience to unexpected depths. And when the principles of psychodrama are applied back to therapeutic play, the children are unaware of any interruption to their natural form of expression.
