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 A group of psychodrama trainees, a colleague and I recently explored Jacob Moreno’s Canon of Creativity. During the weekend the question came what is a “canon”. It is a rule or law. A law by decree a gathering together of religious rules, principles and precepts can be called a canon. The canon may however be a natural and repeated pattern of events or phenomena that are able to be recognized and expected because of their consistency. The relationship of warm up, spontaneity, creativity and conserve are seen by Moreno as a canon that can be described and pictured.

A clue from Moreno

4 Components & 2 Interactive Factors

The first clue is about there being thinking, feeling and action in every and any role.

Second in the graphic that follows there are three additional factors alongside and essential to a concept that role has thinking, feeling and action. They are that:

a. values arise from interactions of thinking and feeling;

b. every enactment of role is influenced by and in part limited by context;

c. every enactment of role has consequences that can be imagined in advance – though are never absolutely predictable.

Click for Larger Image

Four components and two interactive factors of role

Spontaneity is the freedom to be each of us ourselves. To be freer and freer to be who I am or you are and for us to become who we really can be.

I want to be truly myself. Spontaneity is the factor in us that releases that freedom. Healthy spontaneity is mindfully directed and ethically controlled. It is lovingly gifted to the health of the whole human community. The planet’s interest is served and we are co-creators of the cosmos. A dynamic holistic system where we each are a particular and unique self with our own way of being is never able to be separated or absolutely isolated.

Here is a paper first produced September 2004 for Trainees working with Role Dynamics. Only to be copied with permission and acknowledgment. It is a work in progress with revisions and additions on going. Words highlighted in italics are to keep myself conscious of J & Z Moreno. Words in common use within ANZPA Inc. communities are underlined.

I am Myself and I want to be Me

Freedom to act in new ways (Word)

Freedom to Act in New Ways co-authored with Charmaine McVae is an article for the Australian Psychologist’s December 2007 edition.

The article presents a spontaneity-creativity-mindfulness approach to psychological counselling where the client makes new choices and develops new ways of being him or her self in settings that have challenged and defeated previously. The client’s warm up and activation as a competent experimenter is the key. The potent art of the psychodramatist is to coach in such a way that the client’s spontaneity is heightened which increases mindfulness and freedom to be who they are inside more openly and fully. The playful companion coach has as their task to promote creativity in the main one the client taking charge.

Becoming Jane: Appreciating her being and becoming through explorations of role

This article was submitted to 2007 ANZPA Journal and published with a small unintended alteration as the result of an addition of graphics. Here in its original form. The use of the words ”coping gestalt” rather than “coping role”were carefully chosen as Don explained in ANZPA’s online “Socio”. 

Becoming Jane pdf

Socio of march-2008-on coping-gestalt

Walter’s post

Jacob Moreno saw that the idea of role in theatre is a powerful powerful metaphor for how we are as humans. The organisation of ourselves 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, educationists 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. It 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.

A few more paragraphs and some links follow.

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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

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.