Healing World Trauma with the Therapeutic Spiral Model. Группа авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ forget the look on the Double’s face as he fully gave himself over to experiencing the intense pain of another human. As the Double held his pain, the Veteran was able to come back to the present and into contact with his mind. He was able to reorient to time and space rather than spiraling deeper into the chaos, terror, and the violence of war.

      But as he shifted from one state to another, he also looked around and felt ashamed and embarrassed. It was then that I took the Director’s role, holding out my hand and asking him to stand beside me. While his Double stayed on the floor holding the pain, I asked the Veteran to reach out and comfort his self (the Double) in agony, his self from the war. Gradually, he was able to reach out to his self, to hold him tightly in his arms, weeping and grieving together. His Double asked, “Can you forgive me? Can you?”

      Another psychodrama intern was a pastoral counselor and I turned to him asking if he knew a “forgiveness ceremony.” He spontaneously created a healing ceremony for this Vietnam Veteran, actually for all of us present. In the immediacy of the psychodrama, we had all witnessed the horror of killing others. We, too, needed healing. In the “forgiveness ceremony” the minister asked us all to name what we were ashamed of, what behaviors we had done that we now regretted, what we needed forgiveness for in order to let go of our past shames.

      First, as a group we held hands around the scene taking place in front of us. Together we were able to truly see, to witness, and, most importantly, to have compassion for the scene on the stage. We saw our peer, today’s man, comforting and grieving with his 19-year-old self, a bewildered young man who had killed men, women, and children during a war that went out of control. Witnessing such depths enabled each of us to now name our own sorrows and shame: beating up on sisters and brothers; hating our parents; bullying others; lying, stealing, cheating; adultery; abortion; drug abuse; domestic violence; violence toward our children; suicide attempts—all the acting-out behaviors of anger and rage perpetrated on ourselves and others. Loneliness, abandonment, our dysfunctional backgrounds shared, the minister prayed with and for us all.

      A profound sense of forgiveness, of holiness, of God/Spirit’s presence in our lives filled the room. We looked around at each other with love and compassion. There were many “waterfalls of tears” flowing and we honored the courage it took to walk together psychodramatically for a year of learning, growth, and of healing ourselves and others. We had traveled to the depths of human despair and ugliness together and we had returned to a place of healing and love. We were thankful for it all and to be alive in the present.

      Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

      Later, I was to learn that I had actually witnessed a flashback, not a psychotic break, caused by a present stressor for someone who had PTSD. And years after that I recognized that the exquisite doubling experience I had witnessed in this drama was akin to the shamanic work I was to study. While I did not know it then, the drama at St. Elizabeths was the beginning seed of the Therapeutic Spiral Model, the beginning of my own lifelong commitment to the belief that we all can be healed in a group of like-minded and spirited people.

      TSM Takes Root: Francesca’s Seeds

      The year was 1990 and another war—Desert Storm—was approaching. Kate Hudgins and Milton Hawkins, TEP, were beginning a psychodrama training group in Richmond, Virginia. It was during this group that Francesca Toscani and other members of the eventual “Action Healing Teams” (including Mimi Hughes Cox, author of Chapter 9) were first introduced to Kate, each other, and intensive psychodrama training. But Francesca recalls a much different and more reticent path to psychodrama and working with trauma survivors than Kate’s story of immediate immersion. She writes:

      Coming from a broad background of business, the arts, and an in-depth study and experience of Jungian Analytical Psychology, I became a therapist in 1982. The clients I worked with were not trauma survivors per se, yet were searching for deeper meaning—a spiritual connection that would breathe life into their daily existence.

      In the 1970s I had witnessed and heard of some negative experiences due to the misuse of action methods. I had deep reservations and kept that method at bay but used other creative arts therapies. My continued interest and study in cultural anthropology and of incorporating the use of ritual into psychotherapy, however, brought me to the periphery of the psychodrama world once again. In 1988 I had the privilege to attend a workshop given by Zerka Moreno at Omega Institute and was immediately impressed by the power and beauty of the method through her heart. But it was in 1991 when I was pulled by a friend into Kate and Milton’s training session that I immediately noticed psychodrama’s clinical soundness and the power it exhibited to effect change. So I decided to study it more deeply.

      From the Jungian perspective it was a dream, Active Imagination, or sandtray in action, and from the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) perspective all channels were being utilized in each scene. But closest to my heart was what I saw from the perspective of anthropology and the use of ritual and metaphor. Psychodrama has all the elements necessary to help the client transition from one stage to another—essentially, to effect a “rite de passage.” I was hooked!

      The “hooking” continued as I worked with Kate in TSM groups and we began to develop the Trauma Survivor’s Intrapsychic Role Atom (TSIRA) (Toscani and Hudgins 1995). This was comfortable territory where I could bring in the metaphoric elements I cherished and still keep a Jungian philosophical perspective while using classical psychodrama techniques within the clinical framework of TSM. Ah, those “nesting bowls” fit so nicely and after a 12-year hiatus and work in other fields, I have returned to TSM because of its efficacy, its heart, and to help tell its story.

      TSM Cultural Evolution

      In a training group for psychologists in Taiwan at the Chinese Guidance and Counseling Association, a local psychologist, Dr. Lai, author of Chapter 11, noted that the Western way we build a Circle of Safety does not work well for Asians. Normally, in setting up our dramas, we create a stage area that is also a visual representation of containment or safety. Each person is asked to pick a colored scarf, name a personal, interpersonal, or transpersonal strength they bring to the group, and to place the scarf on the floor to create a Circle of Safety. While this circle is recognized as a collection of strengths and therefore communal, the Western orientation is that psychologically people need to be able to own and state their strengths.

      However, Dr. Lai gently informed us that Asians do not like to own strengths in this way, since it is considered rude to talk about oneself. The Asian mind also has a focus on community that cannot be ignored. Therefore she suggested a new way to provide containment as well as safety. At her direction, group members break down into pairs and one person picks a scarf to give to his or her partner, adding words to that strength(s); for example, “I see you have courage, determination, love, and connection to others.” The other person then reciprocates, giving a scarf that reflects a strength they see. Then, together they lay their scarves down to build a Circle of Safety that is more easily acknowledged as a collective or community circle.

      A question often asked is “How can I do this if I don’t know anyone in the group?” As directors we simply say, “Find someone in the group you feel a connection to. Pick a scarf that fits that person for any reason, and soon you will intuitively find one or more of their strengths.” Now when we work with people who have a reticence to speak their own strengths no matter the culture, we have members pair up and honor each other’s strengths. This action shows the interpersonal, familial, and community values of connection that are a core part of harmony in all Asian cultures, as well as necessary for many of the Western mind. Today, the Circle of Safety can be formed by small groups focused on values, stories of leadership, folk and cultural tales, and family histories as a few examples. (See Chapter 16 for an adaptation of the СКАЧАТЬ