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 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.

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