This chapter illustrates how the psychodramatist uses action techniques for diagnosis. It also discusses three techniques which are used today in psychodramatic work: the double technique, the mirror technique, and the reversal technique. These techniques in psychodrama can be significantly compared to three stages in the development of the infant: the stage of identity; the stage of the recognition of the self; stage of the recognition of the other. The double is a trained person, trained to produce the same patterns of activity, the same patterns of feeling, the same patterns of thought, the same patterns of verbal communication which the patient produces. Identification presupposes that there is an established self trying to find identity with another established self. Now, identification cannot take place until long after the child is grown and has developed an ability to separate itself, to set itself apart from another person.

This chapter discusses autobiographical fragments. It also presents examples from Moreno’s own cases containing verbatim transcripts that illustrate the give-and-take between Moreno, his patients, and the audience observers. The chapter reviews Moreno’s life and ideas in the context of his time and in the field of psychotherapy. When he was very young the idea of death, his own death, never entered his mind. He was in direct communication with God. If love or comradeship should arise, it should be fulfilled and retained in the moment without calculating the possible returns and without expecting any compensation. It was in his work with the children that his theories of spontaneity and creativity crystallized. The two factors, spontaneity and creativity, went together. Also he found that whenever a child repeated himself in the playing out of an idea of a dramatic sketch, his portrayals became more and more rigid.