The Theatre of Spontaneity and Psychodrama and the psychopathology
inter-i’ersonai Keiations. :Author: J. L. Moreno. Beacon House, New York. 1947. $3.75 and $2.
These are two of the sixteen psychodrama monographs, published by Beacon House (of which twelve are by Dr Moreno). They will be of interest to any reader concerned in this technique, which is as yet by no means are widely known in this country but has already influenced methods of psychiatric investigation and ? treatment.
Psychodrama and the Psychopathology of Inter-Personal Relations does in fact provide clinical information and a description of the technique. It, moreover, emphasizes the way in which the psychodrama may throw light on hitherto obscure facets in the personality of the patient and in his relations with his family and friends. Moreno himself stresses the need to modify the technique to the needs of a particular individual, and his warning is to be remembered that ” a technique of training does not emerge ‘ out of the blue ‘ but in close contact with the momentary strictures ” of each fundamental situation. A technique of training applied on the wrong level can be wasted effort or harmful. Time will undoubtedly provide clearer information from those in this county who have themselves become experienced enough in this technique to lay their investigations before a wider circle.
The Theatre of Spontaneity, which was published first in 1923 in Potsdam, and of which this is the author’s own translation, is a very different piece of thought, and marks his transition from religious to scientific writing (in the words of the preface). It may be felt by several readers that the transition is not always apparent; and that the principles of science are only yet foreshadowed. Moreno claims in his introduction that ” God … had stopped a day too early. On the seventh day he should have created for Man a second world, free of the first… The Theatre of Spontaneity continues God’s creation of the world by opening for Man a new dimension of existence.” The religious significance of this claim is beyond the scope of the reviewer, who can merely feel disappointed that he cannot appreciate its justification in the rest of the book.
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