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 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 The cyclones of December are long gone and their clawing seas have been replaced by soothing swells grooming the sands up from the deep to cover – gradually and so slow a gradualness – the black rocks to leave knobs and tiny peaks peeping out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

This morning in conversation with a colleague by email we engaged on the need for trainees and students to discipline their writing to meet their publishers precise requirements.

Psychodramatists in training are attracted by and continue their training buoyed by the discovery of spontaneity and the access it gives to their creative genius. They notice they are freer in themselves and more creative. Perhaps this contributes to an approach to writing tuned in to freedom of the rebellious I will be different different kind. They may have an unconscious fear that any request for a written response is a step backwards to school or university. They react protectively towards their new found friend and sponsor. Perhaps trainers don’t assist them to know their friends true guardian and guide: themselves. They can assume and blindly accept that this wonderful beast on whom they ride is free not only to free them but is wonderfully beyond their control and that that is the way of it. Some even think “spontaneity” is release of an a previously tethered real-self springing fresh and naked to strident life. Gift from the deep it is: like a genie. There for their gift of power but more powerful, and rightfully so, as they”let go” abandoning “control” and “trusting the moment”. (see my post The forms I or you take)

Is it reasonable to ask a trainee to write under any limitation. Particularly so when from their own creativity they bring forward their own applications working as a practitioner of the methods of Jacob Moreno. Well our manual sets out the requirements and among them prescribes 7000 – 13000 words for their final paper said to be their thesis.

January 2007 Charmaine McVae and I had been writing in collaboration for the Coaching journal edition of the Australian Psychologist for December 2007. We decided to write on role training as an approach to psychological coaching. Our collaboration got going at the beginning of December 2006. We knew the final submission prescription date – January 30. Two weeks out with 28 pages single spacing written and enjoying our productivity Charmaine checked the required upper word limit. Twelve pages double line spacing shocked us both. We took our opus magnum in hand and saw the opportunity to fine tune and savagely cull all but the tightest writing holding our readers in mind with focus. What we wanted to have read what we thought was essential was given up. The question was now how to put words on twelve A4 pages double spaced and give psychologists an appreciation of role training in one to one coaching consultations. Savage we were and I am sure our readers got a better article with adequate information and an appetising flavour of psychodrama.

Since Morenian spontaneity is mindfully directed ethically controlled freedom to be as much ourselves as we can in our planet and cosmos perhaps discipline to writing prescribed papers as essential learning from the start to the completion of training – but not of course any end of learning.

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.

Click for larger image

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.

The beaches of the Queensland Sunshine Coast are ever changing. Tidal rhythms don’t coincide with our regular walking times and beach is narrow or wide. Storms and winds steepen or flatten the slope. The larger storms scour revealing the black vocanic rocks and laying off sand bars to increase the adreneline of surfers girls boys men women who leap on their bikes and into their buggies in greater numbers when the surf is right. We, Gwenand I walked the beach this morning with deep blue sky shining bright golden flare we gave not a glance and wisps of white misty clouds curling to wreath the horizon.

The form or way of being myself or of you being yourself takes as a functioning form or whole unique being is grown or developed as we move respond and act. What arises from within us is our own “spontaneity” energy and life we produce and constantly are creating in ourselves. We do it. We create our selves. We form our selves and structure our character. The prescribing pressures on us that urge or demand, with rewards offered and punishments threatened for what we do or might do, are the socio-cultural pressures in our society. Surrounding community which has our taken for granted commitment, our family of origin, our peers or reference group engenders and maintains them. So often unknown unrecognised they work to sculpt us to their preferences. Current romantic relationships – friendship groups – work groups – each produce own “role” pressures. We have other sculptors of past times from infancy on our physiological shapers have worked within emotional responses, searing reactions, conflicted urges and blinded rages or blockedness each lays down patterning in nerves, sinews, tissues and involuntary movements. Psyche and Soma soak up and generate stylised reactions programmed to evoke body memories. available or dissociated images, hyper-attentive, and tiny body shifts and cue moves.

We carry our reactive body and mind responses to our environment from birth on. Pressures within and of us are reactivated in response to stimuli that has our psychosomatic system alert us. We bring forward the emotions and constructs that we activated originally. This may be at a high or low level, generated in response to the intensity of the stimulus.