Psychodrama, a well-known psychotherapeutic method, was founded by J.L. Moreno in the first half of the 20th century. He was born in Rumania, studied and worked in Vienna, but emigrated to the USA in 1925. Two of his trainees, at Beacon (New York), were Dean† and Doreen Elefthery Madden. From 1967 on they started to bring Moreno’s Psychodrama to Europe. After Dean died in 1982 Doreen went on with this work on her own.
During the 'advanced group trainings' that Doreen still used to organize, some trainees discussed the idea of organising a conference to celebrate forty years of Elefthery's Psychodrama. We asked Doreen how she felt about it. She reacted very positively by saying that she embraced the idea, as this was just what she and Dean had always wanted to happen some day. But she also expressed her fear of a big conference with extended discussions on theory, or heavy lectures, et cetera.
We shared her worry and agreed to focus on human relations and the practice of Psychodrama. We thought that it would be interesting to look at the developmental history of ‘our’ psychodrama. What have we done with psychodrama as taught by Dean and Doreen after our years of training? This made us invite not only the former trainees of Doreen and Dean, but also the ‘trainees of the trainees’. The latter will certainly give an extra dimension to the theme of the conference: the development of psychodrama.
We were convinced that we had enough creativity in our ranks to achieve an attractive and interesting programme. Eventually a committee was formed and the organisation of the conference began. We first collected as many addresses of former participants as we could find (300 in total). We made lots of phone calls, exchanged many e-mails and wrote several letters. We were able to trace the majority of the former participants of the Eleftery Psychodrama courses. The overall reactions were very warm, positive and encouraging.
Last May we were pleased to have registered sufficient people, who would like to attend the conference. Participants were invited to share their experiences, ideas, concepts, et cetera, on Psychodrama throughout the decades in the best ‘Eleftherian’ tradition.
In May 2008 this resulted in a festive conference with nearly 90 participants, and Doreen as a special guest in the middle of her 'pupils'.
Background of the conference
