The Use of Psychodrama in Treating Relational Trauma
- The techniques that allow empty chair work to flow safely as it explores layers of personal and interpersonal truth.
- Demonstration of how psychodrama is an embodied form of therapy and how it allows psychic material that has been frozen in the body/mind to safely surface and be elevated into consciousness through words and simple, natural actions.
Deconstruction of the “how to’s” of a Basic Psychodramatic Role Play (within a broader theoretical framework).
- “Words cannot reach the part of the brain that has been traumatized,” Bessel van der Kolk.
- How in psychodrama we talk “to” rather than “about” a person/interaction.
- Bypassing the problem in trauma work of creating a false narrative, or borrowing other people’s meaning.
- The client erroneous attempts to describe unconscious material before s/he has yet to bring the reexperiencing to consciousness enough to make accurate personal meaning of it.
The Internalization of Introjects
- Within the individual psyche and played out in relational reenactments.
- Shows how a defensive role becomes established to protect an individual from pain and perceived emotional assault.