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Blogs by Karen Carnabucci
Psychodrama and experientinal therapies make a return 3/16/2014 11:16:16 AM
As insurance benefits shrink, we look for new ways of healing Jacob L. Moreno and his wife and collaborator Zerka Moreno traveled worldwide to demonstrate psychodrama method for decades. Many psychiatric hospitals initially responded to this new method, some building fancy stages with lights, steps and curtains to better use this method.
As health insurance benefits have shrunk, treatment stays in hospitals have shrunk as well. Modern medication demonstrated an ability to sedate outrageous behavior and allow people to function more normally in daily life. Schedules in hospitals did not permit for three hour sessions and psychodramatists were hard to find in certain areas of the United States. Psychodrama — once the gold standard of experiential therapy — began disappearing. Psychodrama began to be viewed as relic from the past.
Now psychodrama and experiential therapies are returning. The addiction treatment community has embraced experiential therapy for the past 20-plus years as it realized its amazing ability to dissolve the intellectuality of denial and move forward. It has been slimmed down and modernized and often joined by additional experiential therapies such as EMDR as well as yoga, meditation and mindfulness.
With the excitement of interpersonal neurobiology, there is a new look at psychodrama and experiential therapies. The newest research is confirming what old-time psychodramatists have always sensed – that talk therapy has its limits and methods that reach the whole person have a greater opportunity to make changes within the person’s conscious and unconscious selves, aligning brains and creating change for good.
More Blogs by Karen Carnabucci • Psychodrama and experientinal therapies make a return - Sunday, March 16, 2014 • What is experiential psychotherapy? - Sunday, March 16, 2014
