© Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP * www.lakehousecenter.com * (262) 633-2645

By Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP

The use of photography in psychodramatic settings has been a common theme with many psychodramatists and experiential therapists for years.

Photography — both simple snapshots as well as more formal portraits — is ideal for group psychotherapy, individual therapy and personal growth groups.

Photographs can serve as warm-ups to sculptures, vignettes and full-length dramas. The use of photos also an be integrated with other creative arts therapies and adjunct activities, such as art therapy, guided imagery, drama therapy, journaling and the like.

Sharing a photograph or two is a non-threatening way to begin a session; people share and exchange photographs all the time with each other in everyday life. Yet photographic content is also rich with emotions, memories, past and present relationships, family milestones, body image and other themes.

The warm-up begins when participants are invited to hunt for photos to bring to a session. At the start of the session, the photographs may be placed on a table, wall, bulletin board or other central location to be viewed before the session actually begins, continuing the warm-up.

Because the subjects of photographs are typically people who are important to us, they are great sociometric tools, showing our sociometric connections away from group. Because it’s generally comfortable to share and describe a photo to another person, they also allow us easily to build sociometric connections with people within the group.

One of my favorite warm-ups involves having participants bring a favorite or important photo to group. Members are instructed to select a partner to share their photograph.

Sharing begins with common questions (see right) and then progresses to more complex questions as trust and cohesion builds. If your goal as director is to integrate new

people into the group and increase sociometric connections, you may wish to have participants select new partners for each question. This may also intensify the warm-up although the director will need to stay alert to the dropping of the energy when the sharing is “too much” or participants appear to lose interest.

If you wish to move into a drama, a good place to start is to invite a group member sculpt his or her photo, paying special attention to posture of each person shown in the photo — hands, arms, heads, eyes. We also may add a person who is only partially shown in the photo. In setting up, we notice who is turned toward or away from whom, who is looking at whom, and so forth. We may invite the protagonist to soliloquize about looking at this “live” photograph. Then the protagonist may role reverse with each person in the scene, including himself or herself. The director may ask: “Is there any way you would like to change this scene?” and give the protagonist the option of rearranging the auxiliaries, adding a missing person or making another kind of change.

Sometimes it is clear from the scene that additional scenes are needed: addressing and mourning a loss, perhaps, or confronting a perpetrator, setting boundaries, developing alternative ways of communicating to an individual, coming to terms with body image or aging, reconnecting with the inner child.

At times, the photo represents a happy scene, one that needs no alteration. It is simply experienced by the protagonist and shared with the group as an important and joyful life moment.

A valuable resource on the emerging practice of photo therapy, a system developed by Judy Weiser, can give more ideas for the use of photos in therapeutic settings. Although she is not a psychodramatist, many of her recommendations and ideas blend nicely with enactments. See her Web site at www.phototherapy-centre.com.

Photos help us get to know ourselves and each other

Photos and psychodrama: a great match

Questions to ask

• Who is in the photo?

• When was the photo taken — a holiday or weeding, a celebration, a family gathering, another event — and how old were you?

• What is the setting of the photograph — home, school, place of worship, vacation?

• Why is this photograph important to you?

• What feelings do you recall having in the photograph?

• What feelings do you have now, as you view and share the photograph?

• If you could speak aloud (doubling yourself) in the photograph, what would you be saying?

• Is there anything that you wish that you could say to the others in the photograph that you don’t feel comfortable saying out loud?

• Is there anything you would like to say to yourself?

• Are there any secrets in this photograph? Is anyone missing?