Programme

Thursday Evening (Day 1)

2-3 hour sessions following dinner

Our harvest and our darkness- an exploration of Lughnasadh

:: Kath Howard ::

The time of our conference is Lughnasadh (or Lammas) in the celtic wheel of the year.  Lughnasadh is the celebration of the harvest season in the celtic calendar as adapted for the Southern hemisphere. It is also the the first celebration of autumn- the waxing dark. It is a traditional time of tribal gathering, celebration and feasting, a time of marriages and contracts between tribes. It is a time of harvesting the seeds, a time of wonderful abundance. Excellent timing for our AANZPA Conference! In this session, we will explore psychodramatically our individual and perhaps collective harvests of the past year. We may even explore the restorative and transformational nature of the coming darkness. From my favourite Lughnasdah poem: "When it's over, I want to say; all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." (from "When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver) Kath Howard has recently completed her psychodrama training. She is also an occupational therapist who has worked as a consultant in workers compensation for 25 years. Kath has Irish heritage and celebrates the 8 Sabbats of the celtic wheel of the year. Some of her other favourite roles are grandmother, mother, sister to her oak tree ‘silanagig’, budding guitarist and flamenco dancer. Kath lives in the beautiful Blue Mountains of Australia where she conducts her private practice , "Anam Cara Counselling" and also leads regular psychodrama groups. Contact via email at taramoher@bigpond.com or website at www.actionmethodsforlife.com.au  Richard Hall (and Peter Howie)
Running self development psychodrama groups
This session is designed for people who are: run their own psychodrama self development groups, plan to run them, or have tried, and keep finding barriers to getting them up and running. Running groups that are open programs accepting all comers, being run for a wide range of participants, with maybe a specific theme or a range of themes, that are run over a weekend, an evening or over multiple evenings, with anywhere between two or twenty participants, are a unique form of psychodrama. In this session Richard, and Peter, will be working experientially with the group to try and determine the essential requirements of running these groups. There are a range of obvious dilemmas that arise when a practitioner offers a group, such as, ‘will anyone come and what does it mean if they don’t’, ‘will I get too many for me to handle’, ‘what if I get some really worrisome participants’, ‘what if they cry’, ‘what if they don’t cry’, ‘what if I cry’, ‘what if I lose my spontaneity’, ‘what if I have too much spontaneity’ ar just some of the dilemmas that need to be considered. Running from these worries is no solution. Knowing our human frailties, our capacity for self forgiveness, and improving our ability to learn, are all essential ingredients for this undertaking.
Bio: Richard Hall – Psychodramatist, Trainer, Educator, Practitioner in Training (TEPIT), is a counselling psychologist in private practice. He conducts counselling with individuals and couples and runs personal development groups. Richard also trains and supervises professionals working with disadvantaged clients and teachers.
Peter Howie - Peter is a psychodramatist, trainer, educator and practitioner and has been running a variety of groups for many years. His work includes organisational consulting, leadership development programs and deep community developments work as well as individual and group counselling. Peter is the Director of Training as well as the Managing Director for the Moreno Collegium for Human Centred Learning, Research and Development in Brisbane. Phil Carter
Spontaneity training for the writer
There is a wide roaming pack of existential fools, mavericks and strangers in strange lands. Some are writers. Some are great. The great writers have achieved a working practice of spontaneity, purpose and craft. They are alchemists working with the exhilarating power of production. They engage readers as active participants in the emerging human experience, not explaining things but crafting them in a way that the reader gets to experience them. Their works and their lives lived are treasures for the apprentice writer. This session will present some of these treasures and work some of the exercises. It is designed for the psychodrama enthusiast who has been keen to bring the life of the stage to the page. This might be in the writing up of psychodrama sessions or in writing story. This is an experiential workshop Bio: Phil Carter is a psychodramatist. He has a PhD in information systems and teaches research to post-graduate students at the Auckland University of Technology. He also offers training in leadership and group work.
Philip Corbett
Creating New Roles As Producer/Protagonist/Auxiliary. To expand our experience of being a producer or protagonist or auxiliary in a psychodrama I believe the challenge is to find a greater flexibility of self, to to be an experimental creator of self,
seeking to create new roles we may play. Along the way we must face our limiting conceptions of ourselves, our self doubt, our fears of failure or exposing ourselves to others. By engaging in this daring enterprise we also encourage others to do the same. We will approach this work through a series of drama improv exercises that assist us to loosen up our voices, our movements, our beliefs about the range of roles we are able to play. We will then work with some vignettes in which we are given the opportunity to explore new roles we may play as producer, protagonist or auxiliary. The session is Experiential Psychodrama Bio : Phillip Corbett is an advanced trainee at the Australian College of Psychodrama working determinedly toward certification as a psychodramatist. He has an extensive background as an actor, writer and director and has run improv drama workshops for many years. He currently facilitates a psychodrama group for people with anxiety and depression in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
In his day job he plays the role of a hard working Chiropractor in outer eastern Melbourne.
Margie Abbott & Helen Phelan
Weaving the Web: Sociometry, the environment and social justice


A couple of sociometrists, social justice advocates and environmentalists present the "Awakening the Dreamer" program's world view  woven with their own,  and welcome you to share and weave yours into creating  a web for engagement and action. The purpose is to experiment with bringing psychodrama methods to a meeting with other well motivated models to add depth and richness to the warm-up to the roles of engaged, open learner and informed, appreciative community activist.
The session will be 3 hours with time for vignettes and matters that arise from our time together. It will be experimental, community , social justice, environment oriented Bio : Helen Phelan is a Sociometrist who lives in Perth, WA and has been working with diversity and social justice, expanded by recent Master's studies in Human Rights. Her path has recently led to opportunities to add psychodrama dimensions to whole systems approaches in educational, policing and community engagement setting where the primary model being presented is not based on psychodrama. Helen's great joy is the recent birth of her grandson.
Margie Abbott is a Sociometrist who lives in Adelaide SA and is a staff member of Action Method Centre SA. Margie loves psychodrama and the method underpins all her work in Adelaide and interstate.
Equipment: TV, DVD
Hamish Browne Appreciating and interacting with the social system alive in every group encounter.
 
This is an experiential workshop in which we will explore the relationship between the social atom and the living moment.  My intent is that participants gain an appreciation of themselves and the group members as auxiliaries and as living instruments.   
 
Bio: Hamish Brown is a Psychodramatist and registered psychotherapist living in Auckland New Zealand with his wife Johanna and two daughters Kate and Emma.  He spent the first twelve years of his working life as an organisational facilitator and mediator.  In this context he worked with organisations throughout New Zealand and Australia. Over time he became increasingly interested in the deep forces at work, both within and between people, that either generate creative, life enhancing outcomes in groups and social systems or block this.  He has been working as a psychotherapist in private practice since 2002. Annette Fisher Shame – Humiliation, embarrassment, dishonour and mortification This session is to assist the development Psychodrama Trainers and Psychotherapists in the area of shame. Learning to accept, ‘live with’ and ‘move on ‘from shame is an important area in a learning process. A frequent response to shame is self- criticism, humiliation and embarrassment often leading to alienation and isolation and little learning is accomplished. As a psychodramatists and trainees of psychodrama it is refreshing to be able to recognise, accept and to find new responses when overwhelmed with shame.
This session will focus on the area of developing abilities to assist in the creative learning process following a ‘shame attack’. This experience may occur when a thesis returned with suggested changes, unsolicited supervision from a colleague or trainer, a surprise attack from an audience member while directing a psychodrama or humiliation from a member of the public. This session will include group work and psychodramatic enactment. The invitation is for us as a group of colleagues to participate experientially and to discover and expand our understanding of ‘shame’ and its effect on the ability to learn. The workshop will also include a role analysis of the role systems that occur in the dramas. Bio: Annette Fisher is a practising psychodrmatist and a psychodrama trainer, educator and practitioner. She is also an artist and enjoys the combing of psychodrama and aesthetics.
Equipment: White board and markers. Friday Session Morning and Afternoon – all day sessions
Dorothea Wajna
Archetypes and Fairy Tales
Psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung have turned to fairy tales in an effort to understand the human mind. Fairytales, as well as offering a door to a mysterious world, are oral forms of folk tales with moral and ethical aspects, which teach us how to behave and how to deal with others in the community. They represent the contents of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, and offer an understanding of the basic patterns of the human psyche.
One of Moreno’s favourite past-times as a medical student in Vienna was to sit at the foot of a tree in one of the gardens and let children come and listen to fairy tales. Moreno said: “The most important part of the story was that I was sitting at the foot of a tree, like a being out of a fairy tale, and that the children had been drawn to me as if by a magic flute and removed bodily from their drab surroundings into the fairy land.” He invited them into an atmosphere of mystery where the unreal could become real.
Participants are asked to bring their favourite tale - either one they have heard and love or a fairy tale they have written. We will enter fairy land and experience the fairy tales through enacting them and reflect through sharing on how this impacts on our professional and personal lives.
This will be an experiential style session using the psychodramatic method.
Bio : Dorothea Wojnar, a counsellor and psychotherapist, is an advanced psychodrama trainee and she is training as a Jungian analyst.
Sandra Turner
Developing What You Need to Live a Resilient Life.
Stuff happens and when it does it isn’t because you are unlucky. Life is complex and challenging and if it isn’t then you are probably living half a life. This workshop will focus on how you can resource yourself to have the resilience you need for when Stuff does come into your life.
Amongst many things we will focus on the expression of warm-up, spontaneity, role systems, social atom and sociometry in your life. The session willuse experiential psychodrama, with teaching, and wil include the areas of psychotherapy, counseling, families and group work.
Bio: Sandra Is a Trainer, Psychodramatist and Psychotherapist who lives in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Over the past decade she has discovered that some people fold when faced with hard stuff, others get stroppy whilst others find another path. It is the third option that interests her most.
Rebecca Ridge
Welcoming Home Your Beloved through the Alchemy of Body Wisdom
The body is a grace filled eco-system that houses our inner environment, from cells to soul. Our Beloved is the daimon described by Moreno, Jung and Hillman as the god or sprit who acts as an emissary between the worlds of heaven and earth, guiding and supporting our sacred natures. In this workshop we will invoke your daimon’s energy , through guided body imagery, yoga and shiatsu exercises that enliven your body, calm the spirit and welcome home your Beloved. We will then create a psychodramatic enactment to ‘cook up’ your personal alchemical transformation for self-healing that improvises the skills for more depth and compassion for loving relationships. This personal development workshop will emphasize Moreno’s vision of an enriched role development that includes the cellular consciousness and wisdom of the body. Participants will learn specific body-oriented exercises suitable to groups as well as the philosophical background of the daimon. The alchemical elixir of spontaneity and creativity strengthened by your body’s wisdom and psychodrama’s relationship repair is what truly brings us home and centered to our body and soul. The session will include: Experiential psychodrama, some teaching & training, and experimental elements.
Bio: Rebecca M. Ridge, PhD, TEP., Registered Health Psychologist (MAPs), Remedial Massage therapist, author of The Body Alchemy of Psychodrama, has been integrating psychodrama and somatic therapies for the past 20 years, uniting the sacred with the playful in an enriched, nourishing, sensory environment. She specializes in trauma and recovery. She divides her time between Australia and USA. Educator, lecturer, and psychotherapist she has both a private practice and trains internationally. Jenny Hutt Black and White Australia: Non-Indigenous Practitioners Learning In the spirit of ongoing learning as practitioners, this workshop offers Non-Indigenous Australians an opportunity to reflect on your current warm up, experiences and learning in the area of Australian Indigenous-Non-Indigenous relations. The session will involve dramatic enactments, reflections and sharing. You are invited to bring yourself, your experiences, perhaps something you have been reading. This session is experiential sociodrama Experiential sociodrama and will involve education, the Life of the Association, Sociodrama, and Community themes. Bio: Jenny Hutt is a Sociodramatist and TEP-in-training on the teaching staff of the Australian College of Psychodrama. She is based in Melbourne where she works as a learning and organisational development consultant. Jenny has a keen interest in workplace diversity, inter-cultural learning and in learning to be an engaged Australian. She is a New Zealander who has lived in Australia for 18 years. Brigid Hirschfeld Our Voice – Friend or Foe – Whole Day “The steam is rising, the rumble turns to thunder, can’t hold back anymore
The voice inside me will no longer be silenced, can’t hold back anymore.
I’m gonna sing out loud, I’m gonna sing out strong.
I’m gonna sing forever.
The silence is broken, my song at last is free, won’t hold back any more
A journey’s beginning on an unknown way, won’t hold back anymore.”
(Ann Bermingham) The words Ann Bermingham uses in her song “The Promise” relate to us setting our voice free from being silenced. How do we express ourselves through our voice- timidly, with gusto, wholeheartedly, or not at all? Our voice is a significant instrument we use to connect and communicate with others. How we relate to our voice changes over time and is influenced by our relationship with other people and ourselves. This one day workshop
will use personal reflection; presentation of a proposed model of the expressive vocal system; and psychodramatic methods to explore and develop our relationship with our voice. How we listen (especially if we are hard of hearing), how we project our voice (especially if our voice is damaged) are important additional areas worthy of attention. The workshop has the nature of an experiment so bring your experience, your expressive voice and your wisdom to share. Bio: Brigid is an experienced therapist and supervisor in private practice. She is a Psychodrama Trainer, Educator and Practitioner and is a staff member of the Moreno Collegium Psychodrama Training Institute in Brisbane. Her experience in Playback Theatre, Psychodrama, Nursing, Music, and as an Artist has led to a great interest in the voice as an expressive instrument. As a therapist she has discovered the multitude of difficulties that can beset a child in the use of his or her expressive voice. These difficulties can continue on into adult years. A personal period of distorted hearing loss and a father who became deaf in later years have awakened Brigid to the challenges and difficulties of listening using means other than our ears and the importance of projecting our voice so it can be heard. Equipment: A CD player in the room & a whiteboard and pens.
Annie Currie The Future is Not What it Used to Be A personal experience of a community response to a national disaster Life in Christchurch took a dramatic left hand turn on September4th 2010 when an earthquake of 7.1 magnitude hit the city resulting in significant damage, but miraculously, no deaths. We marvelled our good fortune and set about recovery and future planning, tolerating the aftershocks. Little did we know what more was to come. In this workshop, I will tell a seismic story of 2011, the year that was to follow. Others will have experienced dramatic events such as floods and fires, which have necessitated massive emergency response, creative innovation and lifestyle adaptation. Increasing significant challenges, arising from a multitude of global events are impacting on us all. How do we prepare, adapt, learn and create in the face of these challenges? There will be warm-up, action and sharing.
Bio: I have been in private practice as a psychotherapist for approximately 20 years, with a background in Health Sciences, Psychology, Psychodrama and Psychotherapy. Previous experience was in the field of Nursing with post-graduate nursing qualifications and subsequent experience as an educator, including clinical supervision in hospital settings. My current practice involves personal and professional development in both the public and private sectors. This includes clinical work, individual and group supervision, personal leadership training and organisational groupwork. My personal sustenance, in addition to family and friends, includes tramping, gardening, sculpting and a good game of scrabble!
Peter Howie Wazzup with warm-up? This session will start with a gentle examination of the psychodramatic concept of warm-up. Participants will be encouraged to become conscious of their warm-up to: the session, the day, the conference, their life. There will be time to pay attention to these warm-ups as well as the whole notion of warm-up, warming-up, and spontaneity. Our thoroughly human attention will be considered through this lens of warm-up, in all its many forms such as: mental focus, physical focus, will power, spiritual drive, motivation, purpose, interest, and intention. Bio: Friday Evening Session Sociodramas of our lives. This session has been stimulated in response to the Life of the Association processes and feedback. The session will begin with a warm-up to bringing forward the significant social and cultural issues that are important to the participating members. These could be issues from our local culture, our association, our communities, our families, and other areas of our lives. They could be issues that we are involved with, issues we would like to be involved with, or issues we wish others would be involved with. They could be simple issues or complex issues, these days called ‘wicked problems’. The session will aim to concretise these concerns into a number of loosely aligned areas. The participants will then choose which group they would like to work with and different spaces will be made available for that. Participants wil not be required to decide on one issue for the whole group. The group leaders will be chosen for each sub groups that forms. Participants will return and let us in on one or other aspect of the work they have been undertaking together. Saturday Morning Sessions – 3 hour
Hugh Thomson Warm up and role training in Family Mediation
This workshop will explore the importance of warm up and role training in Family mediation with particular interest in working with separated parents in mediation. This workshop will be an explorative workshop considering:
A. The warm up process in mediation for both the mediator and the parents attending mediation; and
B. The role development function of the mediator to facilitate role development in parents to enhance their role functioning from fragmenting roles/coping roles to progressive roles in the mediation interactive process
The anticipated outcomes of the workshop are:
1ऀFurther understanding of role functioning and how to enhance role functioning by effective ऀwarm up and other psychdramatic techniques
2ऀHow to become more effective at role functioning analysis and role training application in ऀcoaching and facilitation.
3ऀHow role training can be applied in mediation and in other semi formal settings
The session will be experimental, and involve counseling, families and group work
Bio: Hugh Thompson is a Role Trainer, Family Therapist, registered Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner and registered clinical member of PACFA.
Coleen Guray & Janine Cahill Personal branding: Who am I and What do I stand for?
Purpose: To explore our personal and professional brands and the questions that arise from that: Are they one and the same? And how can this be turned into messages for clients and potential clients?
Process: Using sociodrama to explore who we are, our values and what we offer in our work. We will explore who we think we are and whether this is also who we show to clients and potential clients. Is there a gap between what we say and what we do? And is this important?
Outcomes for participants: Participants will have the opportunity to explore their values and how this can become part of their personal brand. Is this an aspired brand or a lived brand? How can this be turned into messages that attract the clients we want?
We spend a long time learning to do the work, and then we go out into the world with these new skills, and then what? How do we get our message across? What, exactly is the message we’re wanting to get across? To whom?
These are the questions – and more- that we have grappled with as we build our web sites and marketing material. We’re not done yet. We continue to grapple with this daily.
But come with us as we grapple some more with some of the following:
Who am i
What do i stand for
Why does that matter in the world (and in my work)
How do i keep hold of that when different clients might ask for different things of me
What is my vision for my life and how does that permeate my work
How do i language this for my clients so that they pay me enough money to do this work that i love
Bio: Colleen Gurayis the owner and principal of Soft Skills Australia, and developer of the Soft Skills Congruence Profile ©, a tool that uncovers individual and organisational blind spots. My particular interest is in who a person is in the leadership space and what that means for the results they get. I have worked for twenty-five years with CEOs and leadership teams to articulate vision and purpose and translate these into powerful organisational practices and improved profitability. The Soft Skills Australia client base includes corporate (both listed and unlisted), partnership, not-for-profit, government service and defence entities.
Janine Cahill is an Innovation Consultant and Founder of Future Journeys who uses a range of methodologies including sociodrama to explore and influence complex human systems. Her recent work includes a series of Leadership, Influence and Innovation Workshops and Creating Climate Wealth Australia a project designed to catalyse a shift to a low carbon economy through entrepreneurship and integrating Corporate Social Responsibility into mainstream corporate strategy. Janine is continuing her sociodrama studies.
J. Kaya Prpic Stepping over the threshold and into the liminal ...  We have all experienced periods in our life when old roles don’t fit any more and new ones have yet to emerge. There might be times when sudden and unexpected events (such as the death of a loved one, divorce, illness, or the loss of a job) throw us over the threshold into chaos. Periods when we stand on the threshold getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of who we were into whom we are to become.
The Latin word for threshold is limen. It is that “no-man’s land” when we are betwixt and between. It is the spacetime between phases of separation and reincorporation. It is emptiness and nowhere. Though it may fill us with a sense of homelessness, or restlessness, or stuckness, the liminal space is where all transformation happens.
In this workshop we will psychodramatically create the liminal space and you will have the opportunity to journey through it and explore your own liminality. I am hoping we might also identify some sociodramatic roles that help us during these rites of passage.
Bio: Dr. J. Kaya Prpic works in higher education as both a teacher and researcher. She is an advanced psychodrama trainee and is currently exploring liminality in her psychodrama thesis.
Max Clayton The essential Basis of Producing a drama
The work of this experiential training session is to be responsive to the warm up of an individual during all phases of a psychodramatic enactment and of group members during the warm up phase of a group. The ability to be involved with the experience of another person sits at the core of psychodramatic production. The producer ensures that the subjective experience of a protagonist or group member stands in the foreground. As usual the training calls for involvement with other group members, work as a producer, a protagonist and an auxiliary. I will be involved in teaching, coaching, and creating an inspirational session. Bio: Max is an experienced clinician, individual and group supervisor and trainer, working intensively in this field for many years. He has accrued significant skill and a depth of insight in teaching and training people in other cultures around the world. He is the author of several books on psychodrama. He is an Honorary Distinguished member of ANZPA Inc.
Saturday Morning Session – 1.5 hours First Session – until morning tea
Julia Hales My Doctoral Journey
Neil Hucker
Introducing and promoting psychodrama,
Having spent many years practicing and training in psychodrama my belief in its importance as a general method of health promotion and a special clinical psychotherapy has been confirmed. In clinical psychiatry psychodrama has become “the lost child”. It has lost its appeal and clinicians have little exposure to it, which means that patients miss out on a psychotherapeutic opportunity. Some years ago I decided that I would present some workshops to my psychiatrist colleagues in a way that would give them an opportunity to experience the psychodramatic method and learn what I believe are the very valid theoretical underpinnings and measurable outcomes to this form of psychotherapy. One of my warms up to present this current workshop has come from the successful running of two didactic/experiential workshops at the 2010 and 2011 RANZCP congresses. The format I developed for these two workshops were specifically tailored to an audience of my clinically qualified psychiatrist peers. The content of the workshops were aimed at introducing, updating and demonstrating the underlying theoretical framework of J.L Moreno’s psychodramatic method. A method, which incorporates group work, enactment, catharsis, spontaneity training and systematic personal development in its psychotherapeutic approach. In this current workshop I will use the format I developed for you to experience the way I presented the psychodramatic method to my non psychodramatic colleagues. I hope this workshop will contribute and support fellow practitioners wishing to present psychodrama to our respective pre-psychodrama professional organizations.
Bio: Dr Neil Hucker is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychodramatist working in private practice in Melbourne.
Michelle Cooney
Suicide Prevention across Multi-Channel Help lines This workshop will focus on Suicide Prevention across Multi-Channel Help lines and the challenges we face as on-line counsellors and psychotherapists. Counselling and psychotherapy is traditionally practised face-to-face however these professions are increasingly expanding and including phone, email, text, webchat and webcam. Although this expansion cannot replace traditional face-to-face counselling or psychotherapy these mediums are becoming more popular. As an advanced psychodrama trainee I have been using psychodrama principles and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASSIST) to manage suicide risk at work. This workshop is an invitation to explore together how we respond to suicidal clients on-line. Participants will reverse roles with on-line counsellors and suicidal clients, and appreciate more deeply how the psychodrama method/techniques (doubling, mirroring, role reversal and future projection) can be adapted to use with suicidal clients on-line. The session will comprise a series of vignettes that will explore the nature of working with suicidal clients on multi-channel help lines. Bio: Michelle Cooney is a registered psychotherapist and senior psychodrama trainee with the Auckland Training Centre for Psychodrama. She currently works for Lifeline Aotearoa as a National Depression Initiative Senior Operator funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Health. She has a background working in private practice contracting to Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) Sensitive Claims Unit, Community Alcohol and Drug Services (CADS), Richmond NZ formally known as Richmond Fellowship, Youth Horizons Trust (youth diagnosed with severe conduct disorder) and Barnardos Residential (youth with a history of sexual behaviour problems). No matter whom Michelle works with or the context in which she works her principles remains the same ‘to mobilize spontaneity and creativity’.
Second Session – until lunch
Charmaine McVea Research amongst ANZPA Members
Rollo Brown
Psychodrama and the Neuroscience of Insight
Psychodrama techniques essentially focus on creating new perspectives, and regaining and releasing spontaneity. Moreno intuited many of his techniques and, with others, refined them throughout his life as he experimented. They are still being refined as we apply them in our practices. Recent work on the neurological processes of insight has shed light on what the brain is doing at the point of an ‘aha’ moment. Intrigued by this I began to wonder if we could adapt our use of techniques to maximize the possibility of insight. This workshop will focus on exploring ways to do this. There will be some teaching, enactment and supervised practice.
Bio: Rollo is a sociodramatist working in organisational development. For the past 18 years he has applied Morenian methods in his consulting and facilitation work. This year he has begun investigating the ‘Neuroscience of Leadership’ as a way to find a language that makes psychodrama more accessible to the public.
Equipment Data projector & whiteboard please Liz Marks
Family Therapy: sibling, cousin or no relation of ours?
 
Family Therapy, like Psychodrama, offers a systems approach for working with people. Family Therapists, like Psychodramatists,  attend to the context of a person: their family and culture with associated values, rules and beliefs.  This participatory presentation will introduce you to some key concepts and approaches of Family Therapy through experiencing John and Marguerite’s  family and their concerns. The workshop will be based on my 2004 ANZPA Journal article and presentation. You can expect to gain an introduction to some Family Therapy concepts and to co-create perspectives on a family system. By the end of the session you may  also decide whether Family Therapy is a sibling, cousin or no relation of yours.
 
Bio: Liz Marks is a Psychodramatist, Counselling Psychologist and Family Therapist. She works with individuals, couples and families as well as supervising the clinical work of trainees, psychodramatists and other therapists. Liz is interested in the ongoing  integration of Psychodrama and Family Therapy approaches in her work.
   Reminder - Lunch Time Book Launch by Sandra Turner
Reminder - Lunch Time Book Launch by Sandra Turner Book Launchऀ“To Rakiura and Beyond”
Blurb
“Living well is the challenge – what is at the centre of your life is the critical element.” This premise forms the basis for a book written by Sandra Turner and published by the Cancer Society. This talk will be followed by a series of readings that capture the essence of living life with abundance whilst navigating the obstacles. Bio: Sandra lives in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. She works as a Psychodramatist, Psychotherapist and Trainer, loves life and has learnt to live with the certainty of uncertainity. Saturday Afternoon Session – 3 hours
Diana Jones
Integrating learning: the sharing phase in coaching
Jolted into organisation reality with a CEO’s ‘what’s your take from today’ to his team for immediate learning, my desire make something from a unit of work with coaching clients stimulated in me experiments with the sharing phase in one-on-one coaching. In this workshop we will explore some of these methods and reflect on possible applications in our clinical work with clients.
Bio: Diana Jones is a TEP and sociometrist and works in leadership, team and organisation development in Wellington NZ. Jane Maher
The Young Person as Family Protagonist - Social and Cultural Atom Repair Through Teens.
Young people are often referred for their social difficulties with peers yet what emerges are family dynamics that are contributing to, reactive to or exacerbated by the young persons behavior. Family group work that has focused on their interactions in the family has achieved broader social atom repair and has sometimes alleviated the need for young people to even join a group. Other times it has been necessary in conjunction with the young persons involvement in a peer group. Families have found these sessions mutually satisfying and strengthening.
This workshop will demonstrate and continue to explore the use of group work and role reversal with whole families to enable exploration and repair in the original social atom.
Bio: I wrote my Psychodrama thesis “Friends are the Best Medicine” on my Psychodramatic approach to group work with socially isolated young people. I have done this work now for about 15 years. More and more I do sessions with the whole family to achieve social atom repair not just for the teenager. It is a lot of fun having everyone role reverse with each other especially when the children role reverse with the adult/s. A powerful, playful and uplifting experience for all has been achieved. 
Chris Patty Spontaneity and organisations Workshopping a framework on how spontaneity and organisations can work hand in hand. Putting together Oscar Mink’s model of open organisations with Moreno’s levels of spontaneity, in order to provide a heuristic approach (ready rule of thumb) to assessing the spontaneity within a context, within an organisation. Working through how it might assist the development of productive cultures. Using input, discussions and protagonist centred processes to practice applying it to participant’s organisational contexts. Bio: Chris Patty is an organisational psychologist, an organisational consultant in private practice, a trainer and facilitator, and an advanced psychodrama trainee. Chris Hosking
TBA
TBA Antony Williams
Raising the Stakes in Stakeholder Analysis
You conduct stakeholder analyses in organisations to ascertain whether a given project will get up, and if that is likely, which stakeholders have to be managed, and how this should be done. Get this right, and you are a long way towards success. Get it wrong, and watch out! Purpose of the session: A Stakeholder Analysis is a process amenable to people trained in Action Methods. Building on this knowledge, we will design action processes that take into account influence, amenability (easy or hard to win), motivation for success and other factors. Session Process: A lively small-group session where the group experiments with constructing various grids and translating them into on-the-floor interviews in role. Envisioned outcomes: Facility with several formats to use in organisational, community activism or other settings.
Bio: Dr Antony Williams (TEP and ANZPA Honorary Distinguished Member) is author of The Passionate Technique, Forbidden Agendas, and Visual and Active Supervision, as well as scores of papers on action methods. He is a former Professor in Counselling Psychology and since 1993 has worked mostly in organisations in a Melbourne-based partnership.
Saturday Afternoon – 1.5 hours Sessions
Bernadette Rutyna The Focal Conflict Model for dummies This session will explore the ease and simplicity of utilising the focal conflict model when working in organisations as a coach, as a therapist, as a supervisor. There are a wide variety of ways it can be utilised. Participants can expect to practice applying it to themselves or a client.
Phil Carter 19 - emailed
Training Domestic Violence Workers
In the organization in which I have been a trainer and supervisor for many years, the facilitators of the living without violence groups are predominantly trained in psychotherapy methods used in one on one sessions. There’s a lot of digging around, extracting of things from one man while the rest of the men in the group wait their turn. There are two facilitators. Sometimes, it’s like a dragon den. These ‘helpers’ ‘allow’ things. Of course, in a violence programme, one would expect power to be in the middle of things. There are failures of imagination in not finding the connection of one man’s contribution with the last man’s contribution. There are failures of imagination in linking process with the educational content.
In this session I will share the ideas, methods and approaches I have used successfully (and unsuccessfully) in offering the collective practice wisdom of our group method of psychodrama. This will be of benefit to those involved in domestic violence work and also any trainers of leaders of psycho-educational groups.
Bio: Phil Carter is a psychodramatist. He has a PhD in information systems and teaches research to post-graduate students at the Auckland University of Technology. He also offers training in leadership and group work.
Brendan Cartmel
Dialectic Cognition in Therapeutic Interventions
In his book ‘The Passionate Technique’ Dr Antony Williams outlined the ‘double description technique’ where by the protagonist is directed to, ‘put that thought into action’ or ‘act on that feeling’ and ‘name the feeling that goes with that action’, etc etc. - there by enhancing the production of the drama. This workshop extends the directive to, ‘put that thought into action’ by teaching the director \ producer to interview the protagonist to find out which dialectic mode the protagonist prefers and then prompt the protagonist to use another dialectic mode as a ‘mind opener’. This technique is particularly useful as the director \ producer extends the therapeutic relation that emerges during the therapeutic intervention.
Purpose The session enhances professional development for psychodramatists, sociodramatists and role trainers by focusing on listening for a protagonist’s use of Dialectic Thought Forms (modes of thinking). Monitoring a protagonist’s modes of thinking is yet one other novel way to attune to doubling the protagonist while at the same time testing for therapeutic relations emerging in the protagonists ill-structured problem. It is intended to experiment with ‘mind opening’ questions to increase a director \ producer’s (and hence protagonists) cognitive fluidity.
Process The director gives a brief outline to Michael Baseeches work ‘Dialectic Thought as Development’ and ‘Psychotherapy as Developmental Process’ and Otto Laskes ‘Cognitive Development Framework’.
Participants interview each other and try to assess which mode of thinking (dialectic) the interviewee is preferencing.
Participants recall a therapeutic intervention that worked for them recently and reflect how their cognitive mode changed and the protagonist’s cognitive mode changed because of their therapeutic intervention. Other ways of thinking about interviewing (mind opening) are then explored in the expectation other progressive ways of relating may be discovered.
Envisioned Outcomes Participant’s learn to listen ‘with special ears’ to hear a protagonist’s developmental cognitive modes. Participant’s learn to interview for role and practice a novel mode of doubling cognition – the ‘thought construct’ that goes with the particular role.
Participant’s learn to identify ‘mind opening’ thought forms that can expand a protagonists therapeutic functioning.
Bio: Brendan is currently completing certification as a sociodramatist after many years of advanced training. He has for some 7 years been a participant in a psychodrama practice peer group in Melbourne. He is a qualified Executive Coach having trained with the Boston based Inter-developmental Institute. In the 1990s he conducted a successful psychotherapy practice for 5 years in outer suburban Melbourne and also successfully conducted mens’ personal growth groups. Brendan’s thesis is to include an emphasis on dialectic processing. Brendan’s corporate experience is as a Technical Writer and Community Consultant and has Community Consultation, Organisation Behaviour, Theology and Engineering Degree qualifications. Len Kennedy
Exploring incidents that went well or that went badly and we’re not sure why.
This workshop offers us an opportunity to explore vignettes from our working lives where we are surprised by the outcome of the interaction. This may be a situation with a colleague at work where an outcome causes some discomfort, challenge, difficulty or pleasure. In this situation we may or may not have an idea of how we contributed to the outcome.
In exploring these situations through enactment we may get greater insight into what happened and similar situations in our lives.
This workshop seeks to explore how Incident Analysis may assist us to develop greater insight in the way we play our roles and to become more effective role players in any situation.
Bio: Len Kennedy is a trainee with the Australian college of Psychodrama at Melbourne. He has a Masters from RMIT University Melbourne in Organisational Dynamics and is currently undertaking a PhD at Swinburne University Melbourne studying the use of Psychodrama in creating a better workplace. His focus in dealing with groups has been inspired by Isabel Menzies who wrote about Defence Mechanisms at hospitals to deal with anxiety. Menzies’ approach is from a psychoanalytical perspective; however, Len’s focus is more in line with Moreno’s concept of accepting ourselves more fully in the process of creating responses to any situation. Len works at Cabrini Health Melbourne a large healthcare facility in the role of Logistics Manager. In his role he deals with various groups using Action Methods when appropriate. Len runs monthly groups on Incident Analysis at Cabrini using enactment and is being supervised by Jenny Hutt. Saturday Evening Chalkboard Concert It is expected, as it is with every other chalkboard concert, that members will come prepared, having spent long arduous hours developing their singing voices, their poetry reading, their novel and unique ways of poking fun at themselves, and the others questionable folks of this association. Alternately, it is considered acceptable behaviour to dob in a mate so they are rewarded with a spontaneity test when called up from the audience. Sunday Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association Annual General Meeting – morning and afternoon
Sunday evening – dinner dance Monday Morning – 3 hour session
Charmaine McVea
Work as “Love in Action”* (*Ethos of the Findhorn Foundation, Scotland)
The ethos of work as ‘love in action’ seems very apt for the psychodrama community. It inspires in me a vision of people relating to the world in an integrated, active and purposeful way, through whatever work they do. However, on a day to day basis, there are many experiences which challenge our capacity to stay in tune with the life giving quality in the work we do - a general desire for instant fixes or simplistic solutions to major issues, pressure to prove value for money, trends that ‘medicalise’ the human experience, bureaucratic and regulatory requirements, and the seduction of email and cyber-life, to name a few.
In this experiential workshop we will investigate how we can stay connected with the heart of our purpose in the work we do, in the face of these potentially dehumanising influences.
Bio: Charmaine McVea is a psychodramatist working in private practice in Brisbane.
Brendan Cartmel
Change Sponsorship Sociodrama
Its all about change and its about to change again…. such that we are at times apt to get change fatigued! Dr Iva Vurdelja in her recent executive coaching dissertation postulates identifying with the roles of; Change Sponsor, Change Manager, Change Agent, Change Leader, Change Participant and Change Receiver to sort out our executive functioning when faced with our many and diverse change situations. In this session we will use protagonist centered sociodrama to unpack our responses to vexatious situations and enable remediation between any of the above roles that prove conflicting, and the ‘change system’. We will role test new responses to old ways of changing and validate adequate ways of functioning to new ways of changing.
Purpose The session enhances professional development for sociodramatists, psychodramatists, and role trainers by fostering role development for Change Sponsorship, Change Managership, Change Agency, Change Leadership, Change Participation and Change Receivership. The sociodramas will enhance participants capability and capacity and competency to executively manage change by innovatively forming new identity and embracing systemic strategy.
Process Vignettes will be produced to clarify the diverse organizational roles involved when making change and then the group warmup will be processed to select a protagonist who can model a case where change in their life or work or play is needed and enact the respective change system. After a short break another protagonist centred sociodrama will be produced and this will be followed by group sharing to consolidate the group’s learning of executively managing change.
Envisioned Outcomes: Participant’s gain clarity in respect to their functioning in change systems by identifying various and diverse roles emerging in response to the need for change. Participant’s are supported in working to remediate their ideal of change in respect to their frustration index or energy sink in relation to a change system.
Participants vision of themselves as executives of their lives who competently manage change is enhanced.
Bio: Brendan is currently completing certification as a sociodramatist after many years of advanced training. He has for some 7 years been a participant in a psychodrama practice peer group in Melbourne. He is a qualified Executive Coach having trained with the Boston based Inter-developmental Institute. In the 1990s he conducted a successful psychotherapy practice for 5 years in outer suburban Melbourne and also successfully conducted mens’ personal growth groups. Brendan’s thesis is to include an emphasis on dialectic processing. Brendan’s corporate experience is as a Technical Writer and Community Consultant and has Community Consultation, Organisation Behaviour, Theology and Engineering Degree qualifications.
Penny Berran There are certain moments “There are certain moments when we have to …call a stop to the stupidity of being dead while alive”. (Moreno, p.42, in the Dialogue of the Bearer of Truth, The First Psychodramatic Family, 1964, 2011). Come along to a psychodrama session to be alive while alive and halt living in a mechanical way. We will create a warm up to these certain moments, have an enactment and sharing. Bio: Penny is a psychodrama trainee having started at the Sydney ANZPA Conference in 2002. Her use of systems thinking has shifted from the world of information technology projects to systems thinking with a Morenian lens with community groups, the aged care arena and the challenges of a strata plan committee. She recently enjoyed reviewing “The First Psychodramatic Family”. Hilde Knottenbelt & Jan Alen Post cards from einer Begegung And a little quote from Theodore Zeldin (Wikipedia)
"It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, and to attempt to increase, even by a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world. But it is careless to do so without remembering how previous efforts have failed, and how it has never been possible to predict for certain how a human being will behave. History, with its endless procession of passers-by, most of whose encounters have been missed opportunities, has so far been largely a chronicle of ability gone to waste. But next time two people meet, the result could be different.." JL Moreno’s initial publications beginning in 1914 before the outbreak of World War 1, were published under the title Einladung zu einer Begegnung (Invitation to an Encounter/meeting). Resonating with the short texts which he produced at that time in a somewhat expressionistic style, our invitation to the workshop participants is to create a postcard to the “other” who has been encountered or whom you imagine encountering. This will be followed by psychodramatic vignettes that explore the nuances of selected encounters as evoked through the postcard image and the text. The ideas underpinning this offering are about the value of collaboration across disciplines – in this case psychodrama and creative arts practice, as well as the value of extending the modes of expression and representation to explore human experience and meaning. Bios: Jan Allen: Jan is currently the Academic Co‐ordinator of MIECAT (Melbourne Institute for Experiential Arts Therapy) and has an interest in experiential, relational, multi‐modal ways of working with others. Jan also has had several arts exhibitions, contributed to academic
texts and journals and presented at conferences nationally and internationally over the past 15 years.
Hilde Knottenbelt: Hilde is a Psychodramatist and TEPIT. She is the Training Co‐ordinator for the Core/Intermediate Training Group at the Australian College of Psychodrama in Melbourne. She applies psychodrama in one‐to‐one counselling and supervision and in originally devised
‘Creative Voice’ groups. She has taught sessionally at MIECAT since 2006. As facilitators from different disciplines we continue to explore our encounters with each other, our values, preferred ways of working and the different modalities that inform this work.
Peter Howie & Richard Hall and the spirit of Hamish Browne Who me! Fat? Sociodrama for weight loss and health. (Liz Hastings on eating)
Using aerobic power-sociodrama we will investigate the dilemmas of intent, action and long-term goal setting for weight loss, and other attempts to make health related decisions that stick. This session will consider the social and cultural contexts that surrounds the area of weight loss, exercise and health. The group leaders are not presenting as teachers, rather as perpetual students of the profession of ‘getting healthy and staying that way’. All have flunked regularly and all are determined to make use of their struggles, and especially Morenian methods, to help them and others, to make more sense of where the will power goes, where the staunch self lover role vanishes too in the face of fat, sugar, salt in the form of chips, cakes, drinks and others silly easily given up staples of our western diet. Expect to lose at least 5 kg with the vigorous use of the great new Morenian form of power-sociodrama (trade mark pending) with the motto “Save the world and get fit!”
Mental Health Nurses practitioner group – Wendy McIntosh. To Be Advised.
This is a group designed for members who have come through the nurse mental health system, or maybe still in that system, and would like some conversation with peers who have had a similar backgrounding experience, about their psychodrama practice.