The Tryst of Psyche and Dionysus- Classical Psychodrama in an Archetypal Perspective

Abstract

BY BORROWING SOME of the assumptions and perspectives of archetypal psychology (Hillman, 1981), this brief essay seeks to answer the question: What happens in classical psychodrama?
I favor the word classical here not only to connote psychodrama in its classical period, when it was brought to flower at the Moreno Institute (1950-1983)-a microcosm in time comparable to the classical period of any culture or art form-but also classical in its belle letteristic sense, referring to the classics and to the culture of Greece and Rome. It is in terms of that classicism that we would descry Psyche and Dionysus in psychodrama.