Musical psychodrama in Naples

Abstract

Musical psychodrama is the product of the integration of music improvisation and other music therapy techniques with traditional verbal psychodrama to realize an expanded approach that transcends the possibilities of either discipline used separately (Moreno, 1980, 1984). Developed by this writer in the late 1970s (Bruscia, 1987), musical psychodrama can extend the range of the dramatic and therapeutic potentials of the traditional verbal psychodrama created by Jacob Moreno (1946). Far more than a superficial addition of music therapy techniques to psychodrama techniques, this integrated approach leads to a variety of combined possibilities unique to the musical psychodramatic process. In musical psychodrama, the musical and psychodramatic elements become inseparably combined and serve to reinforce each other in many ways. Musical psychodrama techniques-such as a variety of approaches to music warmups, musical dialogue, musical-mirroring, musical modeling, improvised music to support or direct the protagonist, music and imagery leading to dramatic enactment of the music-induced imagery and the use of improvised music to provide an audible and nonintrusive form of group empathy for the protagonist during a verbal soliloquy-substantially blur the boundaries between music and drama. Musical psychodrama follows the model of the shamanic traditions in which music, art, dance, and drama are all holistically integrated into the healing process. In July 1989, this writer directed a five-day experiential workshop in musical psychodrama in Naples, Italy for the Centro Ricerche di Musicoterapia. That the group interactions were so dynamic and spontaneous was a tribute to the power of the psychodramatic process in helping to overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers of language: the director was entirely non-Italian speaking and the group participants were non-English speaking. Psychodrama is largely dependent on verbal communication and is strongly oriented toward the spontaneous and immediate response to verbal cues and to the finest nuances of verbal meaning. Even with the addition of music expression as an element of nonverbal communication, the musical dialogues alone could not entirely replace the need for verbal communication between the director and the participants. A translator was provided for the group, but there remained a serious question of just how the sessions could be carried out with any levels of real spontaneity and continuity in light of the linguistic barriers. The translator for this course, Antoinette de Vivo, did an outstanding job and played a critical role in enabling the group to function so positively. She was able to translate the essential points of interaction in all the various levels of psychodramatic exchange, and after the sessions began and took on their own momentum the translation quickly became an automatic process that was not a distraction.