TRANSFERENCE, COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AND TELE

Abstract

··The time has come to evaluate the advances made by psychotherapy and to spell out, if possible, the common denominators of all its forms''. Thus Moreno commenced his paper "Transference, Counter-transference and Tele: their relation to group research and group psychotherapy" which was published in the book Psychodrama, Vol. 2. And he asked in the introduction: ' ' H o w can the various methods be brought into agreement, into a single, comprehensive system?''
The introduction and the paper have led to my interest in comparing different psychological theories. My answer to Moreno's question is that, to begin with, we must have a common language for communication. All schools have their own terminology and that increases the difficulty of discussing problems which are common in all psychotherapy.
This discussion will stress the common denominators but can of course not completely exclude the differences. Moreno's psychodrama is mostly compared with classical psychoanalytic theory. In part because it is most widely spread and partly because it always has been regarded as dissimilar to psychodramatic theory. The effort is to show that certain aspects of the interpersonal theory in both schools are in agreement, although they may have different presuppositions. Of course, analytic psychotherapy is individual therapy, whereas psychodrama usually is group therapy. This does not however make the comparison impossible.