COMMENTS ON THE USE OF PSYCHODRAMA AS A TEACHING TECHNIQUE
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TECHNIQUEAbstract
Psychodrama, as the term implies, is the dramatic re-enactment in front of an audience of a real or fantasized experience from the life of an individual. Developed by Dr. J. L. Moreno, the psychodrama centers on the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one individual-the protagonist. The protagonist relates one or more scenes from his life which then are enacted in front of the audience. In the traditional therapeutic use of psychodrama, the main goal is to activate and cope with the powerful motives which are causing the protagonist to malfunction.
References
1. P. 143, footnote at end of first paragraph: For a brief but much more extensive discussion of psychodrama rules and techniques, the interested reader is referred to: Zerka T. Moreno, Psychodramatic rules, techniques, and adjunctive methods, Group Psychotherapy, vol. XVIII, 1965, p. 73-86.
2. P. 144, footnote 2 should read: Donald D. Jensen, Improvement of large class instruction Mimeo, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, October 1963, p. 7-9.
3. P. 145, third paragraph (which begins: "In practice, the areas of childhood and adolescence .... "), the following sentence should be inserted between sentence number one and two in the text: "Learning of a complex concept requires a great deal of practice in its systematic application to a wide variety of referents; such systematic application has not been programmed into courses in the clinical area, but on the contrary has been fiercely resisted on the grounds that academic psychology should teach only 'pure', 'scientific' psychological concepts as opposed to those useful in the 'life' situation."
4. P. 150, footnote at end of the first sentence of the fourth paragraph (which begins: "Class improvement should be subdivided in several parts .... ") Class improvement, or lack of it, is based upon the author's opinion. A formal content analysis of the psychodrama papers from the four classes will be initiated in the near future.
5. P. 152, footnote 5 should have the following added to it: One of the two students who dropped the course suffered considerable embarrassment after being protagonist in a very cathartic psychodrama during which her naive anti-Negro feelings came out clearly. The embarrassment was an additional reason for dropping the course besides her low grades.
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