Don’s Site

We have had a busy day with Evan and Isabelle

Jacob Moreno saw that the idea of role in theatre is a powerful powerful metaphor for how we are as humans. The organisation of ouselves to be who we are uniquely with our personality and our system of relating can be pictured applying the role concept. Moreno recognised that while role was beginning to be taken up by sociologists, eductionists and social psychologists in a variety of ways to make sense of how the individual fits into society and takes up the expectations of their community for a person of that status and in that position. It was cultural everyone knows how mothers behave in our society - whatever society it is we belong to. I was soon recognised that each person brings their own special way of enacting a role but essentially what will be done has consistency. We can all soon take for granted what any new technology will have service providers able to do and how they will do it.

Moreno was already seeing this but also saw it in reverse he started with the bit that others reminded themselves of - that is individuality differences. He sees a vital spontaneous creative individual and saw all that they do as roles that they produce and live. They put the mark on the universe they share in creting not only who they are but how the cosmos is for all of us. Society is a system that is created by the numerous individuals and societal pressures which are communally constructed by fashions, planning or whatever will influence everything we take for granted and all we do. The particularity of being a me, the reality that I am me and the experiences I have as I make me role by role has me a unique similar and distinct person among others.

Throughout his life Moreno noticed this and that about the way we are. He reseached and tested his experience observations and ideas. He wrote these down bit by bit. Taken together they are a heap of clues. The clues tell many things to look for and that will make a certain sense of how we live and are and how we become who we are. Role is not imposition and restriction for Moreno its the dynamics of being human his concepts provide a pragmatic life based set of clues we can follow and develop.

One clue is about there being thinking, feeling and action in every and any role. In the graphic and the description that follows three inevitable additional factors are recognised as alongside and essential to a concept that role has thinking, feeling and action. They are that: 1. values arise from interactions of thinking and feeling; 2. that every enactment of role is influenced by and in part limited by context; and, 3. that every enactment of role has consequences that can be imagined in advance - though are never absolutely predictable. They do require anticipation and they will require responsibilities in initial acting and then in follow up.

 If you go to my page on Components of Role you will find the perma link to the document and graphics.

 You might also like to visit my page I am Myself and I want to be ME

The sands were back last week - not completely but another month and they would be. Yesterday the storms sepped up the momentum and so the waves ravage the coast as the rain flooded the lower hinterlands. John - our son - could not get his ten year old son Kieran through to the local hospital at Nambour. The seas tore trees out that had been panted to stabilise the coastal banks fringing the beach. The sands have gone down a quarter of a metre at the very top and are metres lower twenty metres down the beach. Foam like the top on a shaky beer is competely dominating the waves breaking and right up the beach. A man walked his dog fluffy and white with a touch of pink. Just like the foam. I hope he kept the leash on and firmly held.

We went to see Indiana Jones with our Sunshine Coast grandchildren yesterday. It was a great “Boys Own” adventure but not just for boys, Brittany and Gwen had a great time. Kieran and I too. Tongue firmly in cheek Lucas is a wonderful story creator. The actors were superb and the adventures required absolute withholding of disbelief.

For a couple of days the internet connection’s been offlinewhich is no good but back again now. 

We were going to Brisbane today. Meetings with good friends and colleagues. South east Queensland is swept by tropical storms and we are not moving out of our apartment - it could be worse of course and the Crusaders could be beaten by the Warratahs or the Socaroos be beaten by Iraq. For now we are here. Unfortunately the suite of comfortable chairs and settee were cleaned yesterday and won’t dry. We can sit on the floor and watch the tennis in Paris - as long as it doesn’t rain again there.

Going on to the beach at 7.20am the man leaning on the fence post in a flurescent red shirt with his eyes scanning and searching the beach with an exagerated familiarity made his declaration. “The sand is coming back.” This is true, so I say “Yes it is.” End of conversation as Gwen and I sail on to the beach and stride - or so it seems - along the broad strand left by lowest tide we’ve seen this year. The cyclones of December are long gone and their clawing seas have been replaced by soothing swells grooming the sands up from the deep to cover - gradually and so slow a gradualness - the black rocks to leave knobs and tiny peaks peeping out here and there. The sand is back.

I have been thinking and talking with Gwen about yet another child yesterday being baffled at our Leyland 1980 Mini Moke. No doors are a problem if you are two. The mother’s responses are interesting. Watching alongside the mother is positioned as a “director” in a psychodrama for a mirrored scene. Or in a similar relationship to a psychodrama one to one counsellor/therapist who is oriented with the client (or main person involved) towards the imaginary or produced stage space of the main woman or man. Again it is alongside not eyeballing. My creche research of 1979 at the university creche taught me that parents eye to eye with reassurance coddling but underlying concern left disturbed infants for the whole session while those who joined alongside their childs activity and play interest and left quietly left children at ease and playfully engaged in the reche world.

What I was discussing with Gwen though was the psychodrama directors recognition of the point of sufficient warmup to a new role or a whole being/body realization. (realization being Moreno’s word for individuation, self-actualization or for experiencing self in a new or fuller way) This may mean discerning a role (their way of being themselves) in a moment where the of the main person (Moreno’s “protagonist”) has feelings moving freely, body undefended and mind in reflective run of experience that is probably free of words rich in possibilities and accepting of realities - past and present. These body mind cosmos moments might sometimes have catharsis of abreaction flooding as prelude. More often the psychodramatic movements from subjectivities to objectivities and back again moving in the process through holons of their systems within and in the myriad of systems they have current and in memory. Salient holons with their drama’s open at their minds unknowing and unerring choosing. The development of role or warm up to the new wash through and have a sense of knowing and not knowing but of moving foward into an opening universe.

So how did I come to think of the war movie “A Bridge too Far”. Going to a point beyond your ability to sustain a so far successful venture and leaving your colleagues endangered is the image I have. The psychodrama director who is adicted to catharsis of abreaction, or completions within the drama rather than within a group’s sharing or the main one’s own period of quietness, or to demonstration of awareness form the main one, or enthused with greater work to be done right now will be in danger of taking protagonists a bridge too far. In my supervision groups the members direct each other in tiny enactments (in Morenian = vignettes) and discover how much can be achieved in small time slots.

Don

People of all ages point and laugh with delight. Teen agers shout greetings. Smaller children always want someone to look too. Tiny people 2’s - 3’s are perplexed. It doesn’t fit their image of things that move on roads. It doesn’t fit with what adults ride in. The problem is “How does he get out Mummy? He doesn’t have any doors”. Sometime mothers explain others stand alongside and say “Let’s look”. The child is then delighted, amused or simply on to other things. Those with adult explanation and reassurance are still frowning through their perplexity even having seen for themselves that I can and have got out without a door.

Don

The laptop in our Mini Moke and off I go to the Library to play at blogs webs site-management and uploading and so on. Gwen and I have already walked an hour on the beach between porridge and toast with the second cup of tea.

The beach crawls with flora weedy and scrawny greeny greys and fighting brighter green clawing into the sand will it hold against high tide will rising global seas simply swamp its effort.