Leading roles: Some of the women who shaped the world of psychodrama

DrBy Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

Jacob L. Moreno, the European-born physician who originated the method that he called psychodrama as an alternative to Freud’s psychoanalysis, has been venerated for decades by his students and others for his contributions to the worlds of psychiatry, psychology and sociology.

In the past decade or so, increasing acknowledgement and credit has been directed to Zerka T. Moreno, his third wife, who worked for years as his assistant and collaborator, typing and editing his books, acting as a key role player as Moreno directed psychodrama sessions, and teaching classes as he aged and his health declined. After Dr. Moreno's death in 1974, she took over the Beacon Institute and became an acclaimed trainer, writer and theorist, traveling internationally to demonstrate and teach psychodrama.
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However, the fact is that a large group of women stand behind and with Dr. Moreno as innovators and contributors to the remarkable method of psychodrama and its

sibling method of sociometry, which has found places in psychotherapy, education, organizational consulting, medicine, coaching and more.

We start with Marianne Lörnitzo, the young teacher who became Moreno’s medical assistant and lover when he established his family medicine practice in Bad Vöslau, Austria, after the end of World War I. Her presence appears to have been both healing and motivating for Moreno, who had served as a physician tending to traumatized refugees during the war. Accordingly, he named Marianne his “muse,” recognizing the importance of her presence in his life at that time.

He left Marianne and Austria for the United States in 1925, soon marrying Beatrice Beecher in a marriage of convenience that allowed him to stay in the United States and led to naturalized citizenship. Beatrice came from the famous New England family notable for advocating for progressive issues relating to religion, civil rights and social reform, and had offered to marry Moreno to help him stay in the United States.  She worked on a translation of his “Das Stegreiftheater” – The Theater of Spontaneity – and Moreno demonstrated his work at the Plymouth Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she was working.

In the 1930s, Moreno collaborated with Helen Hall Jennings, an American social psychologist, and worked closely with her at Sing Sing, a men’s prison in Ossining, New York, and the New York State Training School for Girls, a prison for incarcerated teenage girls in Hudson, New York. She developed quantitative research methods to measure social relationships, and her work resulted in two published works, “Application of the Group Method to Classification” in 1932 and “Who Shall Survive? A New Approach to the Problem of Human Interrelations" in 1934, among other writings. The approach of using quantitative data to study and measure relationships within groups of people evolved into what would be called sociometry.

At the Hudson School for Girls, Moreno met Florence Bridge, a young woman studying social and educational psychology. She became his second wife and the mother of Regina Moreno, his first child, born in 1939. Florence helped research Moreno’s sociometric projects and later developed sociometric studies by working with groups of small children in the backyard of their home in Beacon, New York, contributing her writings about child development to Moreno's book “Psychodrama Volume I.” After their divorce, she regularly employed sociometric and psychodramatic activities as a teacher in New York public schools. 

Gertrude Franchot Tone, a wealthy socialite and women’s rights activist from Niagara Falls, New York, funded the construction of Moreno’s three-tiered round stage in the late 1930s; she had become a fan of psychodrama because it helped her recover from alcoholism. The theater, complete with balcony and lights, was built as an addition to his Beacon Sanitarium in Beacon. This theater allowed him to direct psychodramatic sessions with the help of assistant role players, which he called auxiliaries.

When the sanitarium and training institute closed, with the property to be sold for real estate development, the wooden stage was dismantled and moved to become the centerpiece at Boughton Place, a small community and retreat center in Highland, New York, thanks to the efforts of Claire Danielson, Ph,D., a psychodramatist and social activist.

Gretel Leutz arrived at J.L and Zerka’s Moreno’s Beacon household to serve as a “companion” and kind of teacher to young Regina Moreno and helped Dr. Moreno with his sociometric studies, who considered her like “another daughter.” When Gretel returned to live in Europe, she trained as a medical doctor, organized one of the larger psychodrama training institutes in Germany and translated and wrote some of the most widely used texts for German-language readers.

Psychologist Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger, Ph.D., studied with the Morenos at Beacon Institute and brought psychodrama to France. She wrote several books on psychodrama and is known as an explorer of frontiers in psychology, particularly with her book "The Ancestor Syndrome," which developed the main concepts of psychogenealogy. As a pioneer in the clinical and academic field of transgenerational therapy,  her books and other writings have been translated into several languages.

Hannah B. Weiner was a major figure in psychodrama in the late 1950s and early 1960s and attracted many professionals through the open sessions she conducted in New York City. She also taught at Esalen Institute in California and influenced the inclusion of psychodramatic methods in the multi-modal encounter groups developed by psychologist William Schutz. She is widely considered the inventor of Magic Shop, the fabled psychodramatic structure where participants barter traits they do not want for traits they want.

Marcia Karp, born in the United States, brought psychodrama to England in the 1970s after studying closely with J.L. and Zerka Moreno at Beacon and his second theater in New York City. She co-authored and edited several books on psychodrama including “Psychodrama Since Moreno” and has traveled and taught ongoing training programs in Moscow, Kiev, Geneva, Athens and Spain for decades. She is a founding Member of the Federation of European Training Organizations in Psychodrama.

Ann E. Hale trained with J.L. and Zerka Moreno and received her Director of Psychodrama certificate in 1974. She has conducted training in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Korea, Australia and New Zealand and edited the student edition of J.L. Moreno's “Who Shall Survive?” in 1994.  She was well known for her writing on sociometry and authored “Conducting Clinical Sociometric Explorations” and “Sociometric Processing of Action Events” with colleague Donna Little, a well-known and beloved Canadian psychodramatist  and trainer who presented regularly at conferences of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama.

Regina Moreno obtained a bachelor’s degree in education, but her primary “training” was listening to and observing her father at home and at work in the therapeutic theater since the earliest years of her life. She taught for 47 years in schools in Colorado, Canada, New York and California, frequently enlivening classrooms with sociodrama, role training and sociometric choice techniques with elementary, middle school, high school and college students. She also inspired  her daughter Miriam Zachariah who regularly used sociometric techniques first as a teacher and later as a school principal in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Miriam now conducts trainings on how to incorporate action methods in educational settings for inclusion and deeper student learning.

Of course, there are many other women who have made significant marks on psychodrama through the years. Elaine Ades Sachnoff, Ph.D., brought psychodrama to Chicago with the help of Lorelei Goldman, a special education teacher, and trained a new generation of professionals there.  

Dorothy Satten, Ph.D., was a beloved trainer in Los Angeles and Arizona for decades, and Elaine Eller Goldman, also in Arizona, established the Psychodrama Department at Camelback Hospital and made early videos demonstrating how psychodrama could be used to treat substance abuse and addiction.

Gong Shu, Ph.D., combined art therapy, Chinese medicine and psychodrama in St. Louis, Missouri, and has brought psychodrama to Asia. Her book "Yi Shu: The Art of Living with Change: Integrating Traditional Chinese Medicine Psychodrama and the Creative Arts," elaborates on her integration of multiple philosophies.

For additional pioneers in psychodrama, including both women and men, visit here and here.

About Karen

Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP, is a nationally board-certified practitioner of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy and the founder and director of the Lancaster School of Psychodrama and Experiential Psychotherapies in Lancaster, Pa., which offers online and in-person classes with CE credits. You may keep updated on her schedule and subscribe to Karen's e-letter here.

Note

The photo of Beatrice Beecher was found online and credited to Bettmann (GettyImages).