【Share】Exposure: Psychodrama Therapy and Dream Analysis

Exposure: Psychodrama Therapy and Dream Analysis 

• usually used in group counselling (a group with 15-20 people).

• if used in one-on-one counselling, the [psychodrama and dream analysis] will replaced by a sand tray or drawing.

• recommended to use in a firmed group therapeutic alliance so that everyone feels connected but does not present themselves as bystanders in the activity.

Outline of psychodrama & dream analysis

a. Tell a dream.

b. outline and confirm the dream with 3 stages: -

lv i. dreamer describes the dream; group members explore the details of the dream by asking the dreamer a few questions.

lv ii. Group members explore the details of the dream by asking the questions from the view of 3rd party position and the dreamer also answers the questions from 3rd party lens.

lv iii. act out the drama.

• the dreamer plays a director role in allocating who the actors/actresses are, where they stand, and what & when to speak.

• the acting will repeat at least 2-3 times, and the last time is without the dreamer's prompting but watching how the actors and actresses act out the scene. 

c. debriefing

• the dreamer will debrief about the reason why s/he chose the particular group member to play a different role in the dream.

• each group member will debrief about how they relate themselves with the role in the dream as well as in their life or any thoughts.

• the counsellor will ask the dreamer about different roles that appear in the dream as a characteristic projection of someone in real life either original or opposite projection. (The counsellor firstly asked about the original projection, as the dreamer said no, so the counsellor asked if there's an opposite characteristic projection of someone).

• The experience in the activity is where the counsellor invites the dreamer to explore each role that appears in the dream could relate to someone (or even the dreamer's own self) in real life, and slowly explore the actions that happened in the dream could be an unconscious message that the dreamer was pondering --- it's not an analysis, but exploring the possible message in the dream that the dreamer interpret it; thus the counsellor has the technique to invite the dreamer to relate and interpret the details of the dream into real life.

Constraint

1. due to the matter of manpower energy (1 counsellor) and time in this experiential exposure, after each group member was briefed about their dream, the counsellor invited all group members (6 of them) to vote on which dream to conduct psychodrama and dream analysis on, the dream that majority voted will be selected.
2. in a real group counselling setting, this activity is either broken down into a few sessions or there's no open voting.

- La Fin -