THE GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY MOVEMENT SINCE 1932, A LOOK BACKWARDS AND FORWARD

Abstract

Apparently I owe the honor of being a speaker to my longevity and I'm glad that I have inherited that trait. I'm not really going to talk to you about the development of group psychotherapy and psychodrama, because I don't know anything about it. I'm here in the guise of an historian since you might say I made my living by crime ever since I was a young boy and the only thing that I could think of to say was something that I perhaps knew myself and have lived through. In a way, I had something for dinner tonight that probably no one else in this room had; I had a large slice of humble pie which I had to eat. And one of the reasons I agreed to come here this stormy night was so that I could say it publicly, because I was at that historic meeting in Philadelphia in 1932 and I was enormously skeptical. I was young then and I had no hesitations because I knew so much more then, than I do now. I had no hesitation saying this man Moreno is either the greatest thing since Barnum or the greatest thing since Freud, but I thought it was Barnum. I'm not sure whether I said that out loud or not, but J. L. knows that I thought it, because we've met each other since.