Introduction

Abstract

WHEN I WAS TRAINING in psychodrama at Beacon back in the 1960s, I recall an evening with J. L. Moreno down at the cottage when he was discussing the transformation of learning. I do not recall his exact words, but the gist was that the result of traditional learning methods, in which the instructor taught and the student passively took in what was said, was essentially the death of 'creativity. He said something to the effect that this was not education but indoctrination. When I rejoined a university faculty in 1979 after being in a free-standing training institute for nearly 10 years, I found myself very frustrated with the format of teaching that seemed to be what Moreno was describing as indoctrination. After 1 year, I knew that if I did not do something different in my teaching style, I could not survive. I took over an undergraduate course in group dynamics that had been taught primarily from a didactic model. The psychodramatist within me emerged, and I redirected the course, using sociometry and psychodrama methods to enable the content to come alive in a creative manner.