 By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
Traditional talk therapy helps the suffering person understand what contributes to his or her eating disorder or dissatisfaction with body image. However, conventional talk therapy usually leaves the person with the knowledge of “why” the eating disorder is present but without changing the behavior. Psychodrama, the action method developed by Dr. J.L. Moreno and his wife Zerka T. Moreno, teaches the importance of human problems in the context of the roles that are played out in life. With the opportunity to change these roles to more healthy behaviors, we have found that tremendous healing is available with psychodrama. With the perspective of roles, rather than pathological behaviors, we identify sufferers as the one who binges, the one who restricts food, the one who purges, the one who isolates, the one who is anxious, the one who diets, the one who fears being fat, and so on.
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 By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
It's Spring, so I had fun putting together this gift basket for the silent auction at the upcoming 2017 conference of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama from May 4-7 in Clearwater, Fla. I call this basket "Warm Up Fun," and it includes an assortment of items, including masking tape, Tarot cards, small sand tray items, a music CD, a journal and a package of colorful plastic eggs. Here's the protocol for creating a warm up with your group with the eggs:  By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
A man wrote to Dear Abby, the syndicated advice column, to voice his distress about his wife’s hoarding behavior. The letter was titled Key to Wife's Hoarding May Be in Her Genes. “Abby,” the name used by columnist Jeanne Phillips, offered her answer. I offer my view here too – it’s so important that people know about their options! Here's the letter: DEAR ABBY: My wife and I and our 13-year-old son live in a nice home we have been remodeling for the last eight years. The problem is, my wife has a hard time getting rid of anything, and she constantly brings home "new projects" that take up space but never get done. At one point, we hired a professional organizer because we had reached the point of having "goat trails" as the only means of navigating our way around the house. We also have a barn that is chockablock full. I have heard that the root cause may be due to an anomaly on a chromosome. How should I approach my wife about getting some genetic testing done? Her mom is also a professional pack rat. The clutter is taking its toll on our relationship -- we are in marriage counseling -- and on our family. We have so much stuff I can't breathe. -- SUFFOCATING IN MONTANA
 Photograph by Sergio Guimaraes of Buenos Aires, Argentina By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
We mourn: Zerka Toeman Moreno, the co-developer of psychodrama, has died at the age of 99. When Zerka Toeman met Dr. J.L. Moreno in the summer of 1941, it was the beginning of a very successful partnership in the history of psychiatry and psychology. She would become his closest colleague, helping him edit and write books and journals and traveling with him throughout the United States and Europe to teach and demonstrate psychodrama, an action-oriented method which was considered an alternative to the psychoanalysis of the day, and sociodrama, which addressed social problems with enactment. After her husband's death, she continued to teach and expand the method, now practiced on nearly every continent -- becoming a kind of rock star herself with dozens of training institutes, schools and associations named in her honor. She died on Sept. 19, 2016 in Rockville, Md. Mrs. Moreno was born June 13, 1917 in the Netherlands. In 1932, she moved as a school girl from Amsterdam to London with her parents. She immigrated to the United States in 1939, as the clouds of inevitable war were gathering over Europe. In 1941, she brought her elder sister from Belgium to Beacon, N.Y., desperate to find help for her sister's mental illness at the sanitarium of Dr. J.L. Moreno, an innovative physician who used improvisational drama on a circular stage to address mental health problems and even then was considered a pioneering figure in group psychotherapy. He greeted her with open arms and a delighted “Yes!” and so began their collaboration. |
AuthorKaren Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP, is an author, trainer and psychotherapist who promotes, practices and teaches experiential methods including psychodrama, Family and Systemic Constellations, sand tray, mindfulness and Tarot imagery. Archives
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