Psychodrama for mental conflicts

Quito, lunes 17 octubre 2016
Participants in one of the workshops
Participants in one of the workshops

 

 

To commemorate World Mental Health Day the university's psychology major in Quito held a course on Theater techniques and psychodrama from the 10th to the 13th of October in "Giron" campus. The aim of the course was to disseminate knowledge and therapeutic tools for mental health.

Psychodrama is a psychotherapeutic technique created by Levi Moreno, it is applied to the clinical setting to work on the mental conflicts. Based on this technique the patients represent their problems through a dramatic setting which allows the diagnoses of several diseases. The speakers were Clara Bucheli, Nicolas Mascioto and Guillermo Ale, who reflected with the participants the development of processes and resource acquisition of psychodrama and psychology.

Psychodrama breaks traditional therapy where a patient only talks to the psychologist. "This has action, through search, interpretation of problems and the group gives the solution, because by acting problems we can find solutions through theater games. The idea is to plot the problem, which involves creation , liberation, where the patient is the protagonist and the expert is a guide." Ale said.

As explained by the expert, the fundamental aspects of technical theater are the body, voice and action, which are accompanied by: dramatization, role reversal, dubbing the character, playing the role of protagonist, dramatic multiplication, concentration, symbolic language, nonverbal expressions, body language and recreational games. The speakers addressed topics such as physical training to rediscover their own body, introduction to acting, improvisation, character building, approach the theatrical text and expressive training, among others.

For Mascioto, theatrical techniques are modifiable and are suitable for any public and can be improved because they are not closed exercises, but "we must not forget that the most important thing is the personal search, the willingness to apply imagination and work with the truth; if there is no imagination and truth, it makes no sense because you cannot find the solution to the problem", he said

Bucheli talked about the work of therapies from psychodrama and mentioned that "in these therapies, they do not work with planning but that an idea is created and the development depends on the body, environment, recreational space and change of roles between the patient and the expert."

The course begins with the theory which is later put into practice with workshops that allow you to put yourself in the other person's shoes and change roles in order to break the verbalized power and seek solutions through fictitious situations where the patient is the main actor and who decides, debates and raises several alternatives to the problem. Ale and Mascioto have experience in theater production in psychiatric centers in Argentina and have worked on issues of theater and motor skills, the use of imagination, body language, personal drama, containment and control of "Bukenval", work carried out with patients from the Hospital Psiquiátrico Melchor Romero, La Plata.

Bucheli works in art and mental health and works with people in psychiatric hospitals and jails. She also leads the "Movimiento Reformador Arte y Salud Mental" research group and is the director of Corporación Artística Salacalle in Ecuador.