PSYCHODRAMA WITH A FAMILY

Abstract

For the most part, group therapists have bypassed the family as an operational group and used a substitute unit to work out the problems of relationship, feeling perhaps, that dealing directly with a manifestation of the disturbed family was more valorous than helpful. But of late, there is a growing interest in using the original household as a therapy group and, in some instances, psychodrama as the clinical method. We find for example, Ackerman and Behrens ( I ) writing that there is an urgent need to study the social system of the family and to reckon fully with the person as part of that system. Virginia Axline (2) writes "we can take case histories until the files bulge out, but we can learn more by meeting with the parents and children in the playroom for a series of interviews." Grotjahn (3) "considers the dramatization of the family problems and the technique of the psychodrama as one of the most important trends in present day family treatment and research." The oldest psychodrama was a family psychodrama (7).