Letter From Tam

Hi Sue,

I was extremely pleased with my practicum and I am still taking it all in, all the amazing sharing and gifts given to me on the day. I have been much blessed and loved. Thanking you for bringing me into that space. I am attaching my poem and the photos on the day.

Love Tam

Psychodramatist in the World.

Congratulations Tam!

On Saturday 23 June 2007 Tam Dinh passed his psychodrama practicum. He says he is now "a psychodramatist in the world" and its true.

Love and blessings to you Tam from us all,
Your companions on the journey.

Thank God for My Fellow Travellers

To all my fellow travellers

May be some day I will be perfect
My need of you will be no longer
But until that day comes
My need of you is so strong
Yet it is not experienced as a need
But the sweetness of life
The pillow on which my lonely consciousness can rest
A remedy for my suffering
A slower rhythm for my being
A trusting, an accepting of nature,
both human and divine
Kinder words given
Than those self-spoken ones of mine
A song in the heart
A lush green field in the mind
A hug so tender
A hello so deep
A how-are-you so loving
A kindness so swift
Oh, and I found my feet
Planted in a bed of you, and you and you,
I grow tall among the elements,
Leaning safely against you in the face of the winds.
I hug my pain,
I stroke my grief
And with all the freedom, I weep
My emotions are recognizable faces now,
No longer nameless,
Pulling strings from behind.
I can now wear my pride and shyness
I have been much blessed

May be some day I will be perfect
And walk on in utter freedom
May be some day I will be perfect
May be that day will never come
While being with you on this journey
These, I know, are what I will cultivate in the days to come.

Love,
Tam Dinh
Practicum Day 23 June 2007

HOME

A leaf flew swiftly
Past my window
And, landed -
Outside - my bedroom door.

Crimsons, browns, reds, and auburns;
Earthly tones
That brought me home.

Whisked up by a gentle breeze;
Danced it’s way to someone’s door….
Waved, good bye!
And, smiled a little;
Earthly tones
That brought me home.


Liliana Melone

Letter from Lethe

Dear Friends,

This Blog is such a neat experience for me, I so love reading and re-reading everything here. My life here in NZ is so different this year, I can hardly believe it. As well as doing 'whale watch' (we are convinced that whales will swim past our window and we will see them - they swam past on Easter Sunday and we missed them!!!!), we now do 'Mountain Watch'. Since the weather has got colder, and there is more snow around, it is easier to see both Mt Taranaki (it was the mountain in Tom Cruise's 'Samurai') and Mt Ruapehu, the highest North Island peak on the horizon. I love the volcanic abilities of Ruapehu, as well as its beautiful and soulful majesty.

We've had an extra gift this week, the mountain ranges immediately around Waikanae have a little break in them, and there is another peak behind which one morning just clothed itself in snow!

I'm 50 next week. Identity crisis again, I'm sure I just turned 23. Now I'm going to copy you what I wrote to Sue this morning, it’s fresh in me to share it with you here:

"Today is Tam's practicum, I always start to celebrate even before the practicum, it’s a great thing to open the door at practicum time. I know Katy tried to ring Tam last night, but none of the phone numbers worked that she had from last year. We've dreamed for weeks of coming up with the money to fly her over for the practicum, but its clearly not meant to be this time. But our light is burning away here for Tam and for the group.

It makes me think of when I did my practicum, and the times now when I have to do a Practicum. i.e. open a door to reveal myself, get through my ego (a million times over) and meet people waiting patiently on the other side of the door. Trust in the process, go with my warm-up, meet the warm-up of others. Feel afraid, and so what about fear, get moving anyway. The riches to be encountered are waiting, life needing to be lived, growth to be grown, relationships to be acknowledged, deepened, joy to be celebrated...
many many things.

Yesterday I had to have a drama with myself about having a birthday party. Frozen chook Lethe! Got my feet moving first, went for a walk, got my mouth open, started to warm up with Katy, as soon as we started to write down who is coming, the people became more important to me than my own stuff, and I started to warm. I went to the fruit and vegie market, brought some pumpkin and leeks and made an enormous pot of soup which is now in the freezer ready to go. Today we will sort out bedding, mattresses etc, since some people are coming a fair way and will stay the night. In the morning we'll put on the bbq and do bacon and eggs for whoever’s around. My plan is that it will be a beautiful clear night, full moon (June 30th) and we can enjoy the ocean while we have breakfast! Plan B will be it blows a gale and we'll be round the fire instead. "

So friends, that’s it from me. This is good to write, its good to have a way to connect with you, and you with me, not so fearsome at all now that I come to do it!

Much love to you, from Lethe

PIM NEWS FLASH!

* On Saturday 23 June Tam Dinh will be doing his practicum. His final paper "Step Toward an Encounter: Learning to Get on Board with the Other" will be in the PIM library soon.

* Zerka Moreno's latest book, "The Quintessential Zerka" is in the library.

* The Wednesday Evening Training Group will meet for a dinner in the city on Saturday evening 23 June.

* Term 2 concludes this week. Term 3 begins 31 July (Tuesday group) and 1 August (Wednesday evening group).

* The Lives of Our Ancestors conducted by Sue Daniel is on the weekend of 30 June/1 July. Places still available.

The Lives of Our Ancestors - Weekend Workshop

Leader: Sue Daniel

Director of the Psychodrama Institute of Melbourne
Psychodramatist, Psychologist, MAPS
Psychotherapist





Workshop Description: This two-day seminar demonstrates a psychodramatic framework and systemic approach to the generational or family tree. This approach of ancestral drama gives presence to the fates, myths and stories of the people that have woven our fabric of identity, and, to some extent, the manner in which past-unresolved traumas and conflicts are passed on through the generations. Events from the past are brought to life in psychodramatic enactment. This workshop is both experiential and theoretical for people with an interest in their family history and also for those working in the helping professions.

Venue: 155 Langridge St, Collingwood
Fee: $280.00 (Deposit $50 due by 25 June)

For enquiries and applications contact:

The Psychodrama Institute of Melbourne
104 Simpson Street, East Melbourne 3002
Victoria Australia
Tel: (03) 9416 3779
pim@netspace.net.au

www.psychodrama-institute-melbourne.com




Leader Description: Sue Daniel is the director of the Psychodrama Institute of Melbourne. She is a psychodramatist, trainer, practitioner, educator, supervisor and a consulting psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice. Her background includes marriage counselling, early childhood and special education and philosophy.

Sue is an international trainer and supervisor in psychodrama, working in four continents for over 30 years. Sue conducted psychodrama and groupwork training workshops and individual supervision sessions in Moscow for five years and assisted in the development of many programmes in Bulgaria, annually travelling and working in and with communities and universities throughout Bulgaria for a decade. She is a regular trainer to Japan, conducting psychodrama training workshops in hospitals, universities and communities throughout this country and in Europe and more recently, in New York.

One of the early pioneers of psychodrama in Australia, she supervised staff in the mental health field using a psychodramatic framework. Sue developed psychodrama programmes in the drug and alcohol field in Australia in the 1980’s and was Vice-president of the Ethnic Alcohol and Drug Dependence Association of Victoria from 1982 to 1984. In 1995 she supervised the preparation of the first Psychodrama and Addictions workshop in Bulgaria, held in the Psychiatrists Department in the Medical University, Varna. In 2002 she conducted a workshop in the National Centre for Addictions in Sofia on the application of psychodrama in this field.

Sue founded the Moreno Psychodrama Society (Aus) in 2003. President of the Australian and New Zealand Psychodrama Association from 1990 to 1994, she was also the Chairperson of the Psychodrama Section of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy from 2000 - 2003. She is on the Scientific Programme Committee for the IAGP Congress in Rome in 2009.

Publications include articles in the American Society of Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy Journal, British Journal of Psychodrama and Sociodrama, Italian Journal of Psychodrama, Korean Association for Psychodrama and Sociodrama Bi-Annual Journal, and the Forum, Journal of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy. She has written psychodrama training curricula and three monographs, Building a Healthy Group Culture: A Psychodramatic Intervention, based on her work in the field of dependency, Through the Mirror: Role Theory Expanded and Psychodrama, Role Theory and the Cultural Atom. Sue is currently writing a book on psychodrama and role theory and has a chapter entitled Psychodrama, Role Theory and the Cultural Atom in the book Psychodrama: Advanced Theories of Psychotherapy, Routledge, 2007.

Theatre of Spontaneity - June 2007

On Friday 29 June beginning at 7.30 p.m, the monthly Theatre of Spontaneity will be on again at PIM, 155 Langridge Street, Collingwood. Here we enter the world of magic and possibility. The leader for this month is Sue Daniel.
Entrance fee: $20.00 ($15.00 for Moreno Psychodrama Society Members)
Supper will be served.

PSYCHODRAMA READING GROUP

Friday 29th June 2007

Meet from 12.30 p.m at PIM for a 12:45 start. Concludes at 1.45 p.m.

Discussant: Helen Fryer

Zerka Moreno said “Once you tap into a person’s psyche, you reach a dimension which is beyond subjective and objective reality. It’s a kind of a cosmic reality. That’s what I think surplus reality is. It has a timelessness and spacelessness about it that puts us in touch with cosmic powers.” Psychodrama, Surplus reality and the art of Healing” pg17

Or is surplus reality “an instrument of disintegration and should be regarded as a theatrical instrument for the director to cause discomfort, uneasiness and tensions on stage.” Blomkvist and Rutzel in Psychodrama, Surplus Reality and the Art of Healing.pg 17

The article for this reading group reaches the heart of the magic and power of psychodrama, and it is based on an interview with Zerka Moreno, where she describes her experiences of that cosmic reality in her own directing.

This reading group is an opportunity to explore ideas, but also our own experiences with the wonder of surplus reality.

Venue: PIM, upstairs group room
Fee: $10.00 (Goes toward maintaining the PIM library)
Fresh coffee, selection of teas and biscuits provided. Bring your lunch.

Please RSVP to Helen by email hfry@netlink.com.au or phone 98743313

The reading, (Chpt 4 from Psychodrama, Surplus reality and the art of healing) will be sent to those who are planning to attend.

Vale: A Psychodramatic and Therapeutic Genius, Colleague and Friend – Leif-Dag Blomkvist (Daggis)

Dag was born 14th September 1949 in Stockholm and died 16th May 2007 in Cologne.

His funeral took place in Cologne on Friday 25th May. Indian music played softly in the background. Between 1.00pm -2.00 people were able to communicate personally with Daggis, who lay in an open coffin, surrounded by many beautiful floral tributes. Karen and Vahur (who came to our International Psychodrama Conference in Melbourne, March 2006) brought a floral tribute from Estonia and laid a little wooden train engine with the flowers to symbolise “the lost locomotive”.

Dag was very gifted and imaginative and this was illustrated in his writing. For example, in our library, ‘Dramatis Personae and Acting Out in Psychodrama’ and ‘Some Remarks about Medical Shadow in Training in Psychotherapy and Psychodrama.’

I wrote this poem for my friend, Dag, which will be read at a memorial service for him in Elaine Sachnoff’s garden 30 June 2007.

Through the gauzy white veil
You appeared
Looking gently

Connected in time
and space yet
from another era

Unearthly yet
knowing of the earth
an angel most ethereal

Here for a time
to touch without
leaving any mark
all with eyes to
see you

A pure spirit
of the first order

A gentle soul
A feeling heart
that imbued an
imaginative mind
as deep as the sea

There you are
And now you are
gone in the mist of
ages.
Daggis.

Zerka

Here she is, Zerka T. Moreno in her rooms. Her house is at the end of a row on the perimeter of an enclosed community and backs on to a forest of beeches and dogwood. The community is on the outskirts of the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Being in her home and looking out of her windows I had the sense of being in the countryside. It was very peaceful. I felt uplifted and warm when I met with Zerka in May. It had been seven years since I’d last seen her in Jerusalem. She had come to dinner with Ted and myself and a small group of friends and acquaintances to celebrate Ted’s birthday. This time, blue eyes blazing with intensity and a fierce intelligence she talked about Moreno, the early years and the significance of Sociometry, subjects close to my heart. Approaching her 90th birthday on the 13th of June, Zerka is writing, conducting groups and meeting with people from all over the world. She has a warm companion, Dale who made us feel very welcome with the offer of cookies and drinks.

Sue Daniel

More Photos of the Winter banquet

Winter Banquet

Pleasant, Warm and Happy. These 3 words describe the Winter Meeting of the Moreno Psychodrama Society, Sunday 3 June 2007

Today we held a 21st Century Banquet at PIM. Tables were set in banquet style, harp and guitar music and some lovely piano concertos enhanced the warm and intimate atmosphere. One person said that when she walked in the door and saw the scene; white and red tablecloths, candles and people sitting around eating, she thought that there was a warm fire in the hearth, such was the warmth of the setting. Stories were told as we sat around the table, bringing much laughter, surprise and delight. The raffle was won by Margaret Shanahan, 2nd prize went to Lorraine Michael and Patricia Green received 3rd prize.

Katrina and Lethe Gaskin were there in spirit. They emailed a Prayer for the Feast which Sue read.

Karakia Kai o to Moreno Psychodrama Society 3 June 2007
(Food prayer)



Kua horahia te kai
Nä ngä atua i homai
Tane Mahuta
Haumiatiketike
Rongomatane
Tangaroa
Aroha taku kia koutou ki te kumara, ki te roast meat, ki te custard, ki te....
Kia ora koutou katoa.


This food has been laid out before us
Given to us by the atua (gods)
Tane god of forest
Haumia god of cultivated kai (foods)
Rongo god of kumara and peace
Tangaroa god of the sea
Love to you all for the potatoes, the roast meat, the custard ....

Thank you all!

XXXXX Lethe and Katrina who are with you in spirit always

Photograph from the 21st Century Banquet: