Psychodrama is a group work method developed by J. Moreno, in which dramatic improvisation is used as an intrument to understand and change the inner world of the individual. Today this method is widely used in education and psychotherapy.
Over the years of its existence as a method of psychological support, psychodrama has accumulated valuable experience in dealing with many complex issues, including the effects of psychological trauma. In Israel, for example, psychodramatists have worked with the post-traumatic stress of participants in warfare, and in the United States this method has been used for the social-psychological rehabilitation of Vietnam War veterans.The psychodramatic method has proven effective in working with adults of different ages, occupations, nationalities, and social status, as well as in working with children. Such widespread use of psychodrama is not accidental because the ability to play is natural to humans; it is inherent in children and adults.
Reflecting on the potential of role-playing games, Moreno notes that they enable a person to actively experiment with realistic as well as unrealistic life roles, to build strategies of behavior from different role positions (both from the person's own position and from the position of the people around him).
How to help children and adolescents who have suffered from different types of violence with the means of psychodrama?What should the work with them contain?How to help them to restore a positive attitude towards themselves and others, towards life in general, to strengthen their own "I", to come out of the position of "victim", to become people who are able to trust themselves and others, to defend themselves? Some of these questions are possible answers in this article.
Characteristics of children
The objectives of psychological support for child victims of violence shall be determined taking into account the specificities of these children. Various studies in the psychoanalytic paradigm have shown that abuse, cruelty, and the absence of emotional warmth have a fatal impact on the child's life. Children who have experienced cruel treatment grow up suspicious, overfed. They have a distorted attitude towards themselves and others, they are unable to trust, very often they are not aware of their own feelings, they tend to be cruel, as if they were taking revenge again and again on others for their experience of humiliation and suffering. Children who have experienced violence are characterised by the following attitudes towards themselves and others.
First, they feel different from others, unworthy of love, bad, "dirty", worthless. Often this is combined with the idea that they are small, weak and unable to change their life situation. The child is unconfident in their own strengths and abilities, feeling powerless and helpless (victim position). There is also another variant: the young person outwardly looks like a "cool dude who doesn't care about anything" , but behind this armour there is a deep fear and a feeling of helplessness, combined with alienation from people, a hunger for love and warmth.
Second, they don't trust anyone (especially adults). Child victims of abuse are often afraid of people, consider them dangerous, hostile and deny any opportunity to turn to them for help. Often their motto is: 'Trust no one, hope for nothing, ask no one for anything'.
Third, they have little contact with their body and their true feelings. Victims of abuse during their traumatic experiences have repressed or pushed away their strongest feelings in order to survive. As a result of this repression, dissociation, i.e. splitting, separation of the Self, often appears. The most common form of dissociation is the splitting of bodily sensations and consciousness. Once upon a time, in a moment of cruel treatment, dissociation helped the child to survive, to cope with unbearable physical or mental pain. The child seemed to imagine that it happened to someone else, not to him. He learns to separate his emotional reactions from those of the body. When the youngster is in the role of the "strong, independent dude," it is as if he "freezes the pain," "petrifies," "goes numb," so that he feels nothing in order to survive. He then often tries to restore the lost intensity of feelings by using alcohol or drugs. Alyssa Miller and other psychotherapists working with rejected or physically abused patients note similar things in their practice. As one social worker put it, "these people are trying to find something they've lost; they may not even know exactly what they're missing, but they're absolutely sure they're missing something and need it."
Fourth, in these children, a violation of the boundaries of their personal space occurs. They become either too rigid or vague, confused.
These characteristics are very important for the organization of the psychodramatic process, for the choice of specific techniques and tools.
It should also be noted that all the activity of such a child is directed to his own protection, but it can be expressed in several directions. First, it can be alienation from people and aggressive activity aimed at overcoming an obstacle at any cost (such activity is often characterized by the phrase: "Not a man, but a tank"). Second, alienation from oneself and one's resources, seeking the one who will solve the problem (seeking opportunities of "clinging" to the other, to the one who will be in the role of protector). Third - passive, defensive behaviour (leaving, running away).
Pychodramatic methods have the following advantages:
- include important elements of personality projection and identification;
- Imaginatively represent and dramatize the role behavior of interacting members;
- focus on the social system and processes of social interaction;
- help express the "forbidden emotions" that literally overwhelm these children (anger, fear, irritation, resentment) and find "culturally acceptable" ways to express them.
The latter is very important for those who work with children who have experienced abuse to know. Most often, feelings of anger and resentment surface first after the child admits the fact of abuse. The existence of this phenomenon has been confirmed by various researchers (C. Rogers, E. Gill, E. Bannister, etc.) To want the other to feel pain, to pay back the one who has offended you - these are the first feelings that fill young victims of abuse after they have told about it in individual counselling or in a group. But they are afraid to express their anger, they are afraid that they will not be understood and that they will be judged (irritation, anger are traditionally considered "bad" emotions). Moreover, children do not have the experience of expressing them constructively.
Important factors of psychodramatic work - to create a safe space where the child can play out his negative emotions, not keep them inside and learn to express his anger constructively.
According to Adam Blatner (Blatner, 1973), "psychodrama details the unconscious acting out of behavior that we use as a defense mechanism to discharge internal impulses during symbolic or real action."
The fact that psychodrama uses natural ways to heal adults and children who have experienced severe psychological trauma is very important. Some defense mechanisms of the psyche manifest themselves in behaviors that do not receive the approval of society, and so educators at best ignore these mechanisms, but more often suppress them (parents tell their depressed children not to despair, and angry children to calm down.)
Adam Blatner also notes that our culture attributes many human qualities primarily to childhood, such as creativity, spontaneity, and the desire to play, and thus prevents childhood immediacy from manifesting itself in adult life. Psychodramatic work with children allows these qualities to develop and treats their manifestations with respect. Children have an excellent sense of symbolic reality. In it, they have the opportunity to play many roles, and at the same time to experience the integration of experiences arising in the process of play. Psychodrama does not interfere with children's natural behaviour; on the contrary, it supports it and, if we look more broadly, enables them to feel accepted and valued.
Безплатна консултация
