Come walk with me through a meadow in Colorado’s high country on a crisp, early September morning. The meadow is dotted with spider webs, some small, some large, some very large indeed, and the morning dew still sparkles on many of them. While they are of several shapes, all are the night’s efforts of the various spiders to create a home and a means of procuring the resources to maintain life and to survive long enough to produce the next generation of spiders. The next generation has the genetic code for spinning webs, so the small decorators of meadows can go about their age’s old business. Often a wandering deer or elk or coyote will lope across the meadow, causing damage or destruction of some of the webs. The spiders repair them or re-weave them, because that is what spiders do.

The ordered arrangement of the strands of the web, from smaller circles on out to the edge of the web, sections knotted together at regular intervals, represents an efficient design for gathering resources. Viewed from the perspective of systems theory and model making, it can also represent a schematic of human relationships. Family, groups, community and impinging society, all are held together in a relationship composed of contact and tension. Break up a part, and the whole reverberates to the energetic change until repair can take place.

Moreno pointed out that we are all connected, part of the web, and proved this in his study of Hudson School for Girls in New York in the mid l930s. With the assistance of Helen Hall Jennings, he established and documented the connections of all of the 500 some residents in the school, showing the linkages, through affiliations, of each girl to every other girl in the school. This study added another important element to what he termed sociometry, the ability to investigate and evaluate existing and preferred relationships in groups. He began the demonstration of the importance of choice in relationships, exploring the effects on group function through choices of the individuals in a group. With sociometry we can explore people’s attractions, repulsions and neutrality states.

Moreno demonstrated, and we continue to demonstrate, that many of the most important choices humans make are based in unconscious processes. Sociometric exploration in groups can help participants become more conscious of the choices they make and on what they base those choices. The spider repairs the web because that is what spiders do. Humans can choose which aspects of their network of affiliations they repair and strengthen, and which they allow to end.

In training groups, participants have an opportunity to put the principles of sociometry into action through exercises created to heighten consciousness about personal choice. These exercises can help strengthen trust and cohesion in the group. We believe that such exercises are best utilized when the revelation of choice can result in useful encounter and potential for growth, as well as for personal and group problem solving.

Sociometry and group psychotherapy are areas considered important in the credentialing process created by the American Board of Examiners in Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. Again, Moreno made an early contribution to work with groups, stating: We are born into a group, grow up in groups, live, love and work in groups—healing is best done in groups”. In today’s world, this may seem commonplace and redundant. However, in the l930’s and 1940’s, the accepted model for mental health services and treatment was that of one-to-one. Acceptance of groups as a therapy modality was not well implemented until after World War II. The sheer number of returning veterans needing mental health services required a change from the traditional one-to-one approach, to that of work in groups.

Early studies of group processes took place in situations where large numbers of people spent time together due to necessity; hospitals, industry, prisons, the military. The findings of these early studies established several important points. Chief among these are: all groups develop rules of behavior for group members; all groups go through distinct stages of development; the bonds of sentiment (a term for energy exchanges coined by an early group researcher, George Homans), in groups increase in relationship to time spent together and task accomplishment; leaderless groups tend to entropy; and that personal choice of members of the group can impact all aspects of group life.

A psychodrama group represents an intentional community, created for the purpose of gathering emotional resources for the healing of all of the participants in the group. To return to our earlier spider web analogy, the group is a created web of relationships where all can be involved in the creation of a healing environment for each participant. Individuals who enter training in psychodrama often do so because they have had a good personal experience with the modality and with a psychodrama group. They quickly learn that all groups are different and that the reliable creation of a group climate characterized by openness, respect, safety and support for exploration of issues doesn’t “just happen”. The facilitator of the group must have a deep understanding of group process as well as knowledge of the steps and phases of psychodrama and psychomotor therapy; be ready and able to model open communication practices; and demonstrate in action the characteristics that will lead to the formation of a group culture of openness and generosity.

Trainees also quickly learn that a group without a facilitative leader will flounder about in search of structure, direction and a director. TLPI places emphasis on helping trainees learn the elements of group process and group facilitation. Trainees have opportunity for self evaluation in this process, both as group members and as group facilitators.

© Georgia A. Rigg, LCSW, T.E.P.