TWENTY YEARS OF PSYCHODRAMA AT SAINT ELIZABETHS HOSPITAL

Abstract

It has always been the policy of Saint Elizabeths Hospital to further research and to give new ideas a chance to prove themselves. Thus,
Saint Elizabeths Hospital was the first large mental hospital in the United States to pioneer group psychotherapy, sociometry and psychodrama. Dr. E. W. Lazell used a lecture technique in 1921, under the administration of Dr. William Alanson White. This was primarily a didactic method but, even so, no other mental hospital in the United States had employed such practice. Joseph Pratt of Boston, for instance, a pioneer indeed, lectured to tuberculous rather than mental patients; Lazell was the first to do that. Shortly afterwards Dr. J. L. Moreno came to the United States and set the pace for the modern group psychotherapy movement by introducing the term group psychotherapy and the principle of therapeutic interaction among the patients themselves.