Psychodramatic Songwriting

Abstract

Having developed first as a music therapist and then psychodramatist, I am

drawn to ways in which musical engagement can support and augment the

experience and impact of the psychodramatic process. At times in my own

psychodrama training, I have found that songs, fertilized within a poignant role or

moment of enactment, were later born, thereby extending, in a vivid way, my own

connection to that role or to the cathartic or integrative moment.

I share with you here one such song, which came into being as I was

preparing to say good-bye to a training group who had been my psychodramatic

family for many years. Two significant experiences were the catalysts. The first was

a transcendent moment during a psychodrama in which I was protagonist. I had

been wrestling with fears and questions of mortality. Within the drama, the

auxiliary who was playing the role of the Divine, came over to me and held me

silently for what felt like time out of time. In that suspended moment, I

experienced a sense of assurance that I had been held since before my birth, and

would continue to be held beyond the other end of this life. It was all that the

Divine was able to guarantee, and yet it was profoundly enough.

A few months later, as the psychodrama group was coming to an end for me,

the experience of being held in that deep way came over me again. This time, the

Divine was embodied in my fellow group members, who had held my stories, my

tears, my anger, and my joy, who had witnessed my truth over a number of years

with compassion, and who had supported my growth. I wrote this song for them,

in gratitude, and I wrote it for me, so that I could hold on to this feeling of being

held.

In the years since this song came into being, life has continued to bring along

many opportunities for endings, beginnings, transitions, and uncertainties. When I

feel the fear and anxiety such times tend to bring, I come back to this song.

Through singing or listening, I return to the assurance that I am not alone. I am

reminded that that is enough.