One of the greatest of the methodological difficulties which the social sciences have had to face has been the discrepancy between verbalized behavior and behavior in life situations. The more fundamental and central a situation or relationship may be in family and marriage relationships for the individuals concerned, the greater is the social tension if such discrepancy arises. Psychodramatic procedure establishes a number of typical situations which are standardized for use in the various relationships which come under observation. These situations, of course, are based upon actual psychodramatic experience with many married couples. Psychodramatic treatment of marriage problems has emphasized the importance of the part played by hidden roles in the personalities of the two partners. Many cases of failure have been noted in which the cause could be traced to the emergence of the role, at a time which may be even years after the wedding.

As long as the nature of eugenic affinities is not established by biogenetic research, we shall assume two practical rules: that psychological nearness or distance is indicative of eugenic nearness or distance and that clinical studies of crossings lead to a preliminary classification of eugenic affinity. We may have to consider not only changes in the genes but changes between the genes whatever mutation may have taken place in a gene and for whatever reason, mechanical and chemical. If this mutation should be favorable the genes must be attractive to one another, that is, must correspond to changes in some other genes. In other words, the genes must be able to produce a functional relation; morphological affinities and disaffinities between them may exist. A definite relation may exist between gene effect, the reflection of one gene upon another and upon the individual characters, and tele effect.

Psychoses can be treated by means of the psychodraina, but questions have been raised as to just how this treatment can be accomplished and what effect the psychodramatic treatment has upon the psychotic and his disorder. Freud distinguished between those mental disorders in which a transference from the patient to the physician can take place and those of such narcissistic character that no transference is possible. He declared persistently that psychoanalytic treatment can be applied only to patients who can produce a transference to the analyst. Consequently, as soon as he discovered that a patient was suffering from a schizophrenia or similar narcissistic disorder, he declined to treat the patient further stating that psychoanalytic treatment would do no good. The psychodrama actually functions as a milieu which will reflect that patient’s psychosis in such a way and on such a level that he can see his psychotic experiences objectified.

The patient, Martin Stone, earne to Beacon for treatment, at times together with his wife, once a week during the summer of 1941. Two days after his second treatment session this dream took place. Its psychodramatic production was recorded by means of a recorder, and an observer in the audience recorded the actions and interactions between the dream characters. The objective of psychodramatic techniques is to stir up the dreamer to produce the dream instead of analyzing it for him. The first stage of the production was the dream which Martin actually had on the reality level on a specific date; then Martin was unconsciously his own producer. The stage of production was in the mind of the sleeper; the dreamer hallucinates all his auxiliary egos and auxiliary objects. The second stage of production takes place in a theatre of psychodrama; it is here that therapy beings.

The problems of industry are not merely those of machines, of technological processes, or of scientific engineering. An industrial conflict of various sorts is to be found merely in the definition of the dichotomous interests. The problem is one of human relationships the focus of attention must be on interpersonal relationships. It is for this reason that sociometry, which has grown out of clinical practice on human relationships, is so well adapted to needs of the scientists and clinicians working in the industrial situation. The interest in human relationships in industry on a large scale is rather recent. While economists wrote on the problem generations ago, while industrial psychologists have claimed a discipline for a generation, and while sociologists have been interested in group structure for half a century, the focus of attention by many disciplines in any concerted way has come about only in the last seventeen years.

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.

The new era is one of multiple innovations which have set the pace for the developments in psychiatry. The theories of interpersonal relations, micrasociology, and sociometry and the theories of the encounter, spontaneity, and creativity have opened up vast areas of research in psychiatry, social psychology, and social anthropology. New methods of therapy group psychotherapy, psychodrarna, sociodrama, psychosomatic medicine, and psychopharmacology have been introduced. The ideas of the therapeutic society, therapeutic community, and the “open door” of prisons and mental hospitals are beginning to replace the older coercive methods of the management of prisoners and mental patients. A new body of theory has developed in the last thirty years which aims to establish a bridge between psychiatry and the social sciences; it tries to transcend the limitations of psychoanalysis and behaviorism by a systematic investigation of social phenomena. One of the most significant concepts in this new theoretical framework is the role concept.