psychodrama
n. a method of psychotherapy in which clients enact their concerns to achieve new insight about themselves and others. Its central premise is that spontaneity and creativity are crucial for the balanced, integrated personality and that humans are all improvising actors on the stage of life. Clients may role play in a variety of scenes either lived or imagined. The process involves (a) a protagonist, the client or central figure in the drama; (b) a director, or therapist, who guides this process and assists the client with alternative enactments and interpretations; and (c) auxiliary egos, therapeutic actors who assist the protagonist in completing his or her interaction with significant others in the drama. When psychodrama is used in a group, these actors are other group members, serving as therapeutic agents by sharing common themes or experiences touched on in the drama. In individual treatment, the protagonist takes the
needed roles, although some therapists become involved in the action. Various special techniques are used to advance the therapy, among them role reversal, soliloquy, doubling (see double), and future exploration. See also hypnodrama; sociodrama; Theater of Spontaneity. [developed in the 1920s by Jacob L. Moreno]