Changing the Past: Creating Future Futures From Past Futures Through Psychodrama

Abstract

The past as we know it is not an immutable structure. It is a reconstruction in memory that can borrow from other sources to the point of confabulation. Furthermore, the reconstructed past usually serves to maintain a personal identity and to perpetuate a selected life script. Future choices are affected by our beliefs about our past experiences and often serve to reinforce them. Armed with this knowledge, the psychodramatist can re-enact past difficulties to a beneficial resolution. By changing the protagonists' views of their
past experience, the psychodramatist positively affects future choices and experiences. This is the thesis of Donnell Miller's monograph Changing the Past: Creating Future Futures From Past Futures Through Psychodrama. Miller blends theoretical constructs with reports of actual psychodrama sessions to show how working through past conflict can change present choices, and consequently, future futures.