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Psychodrama in different countries-Romania

Country

Romania is the seventh most populous state in the European Union. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest. Located in the South-Eastern part of Europe, Romania reunites three historical regions, speaking the Romanian language: Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania. Hungarian language is spoken by 6.1% of the population as a first language, mostly in the Transylvania region.

After the Second World War, Romania was under communist dictatorship for 45 years, isolated from the rest of Europe, until the violent Revolution in December 1989.

Psychodrama in Romania

Psychology was severely constrained and eventually forbidden for 12 years during the communist regime. It was re-instituted as an academic discipline in 1990.
Today, over a thousand of specialists have been trained in psychodrama in Romania and more than 300 of them are psychodrama psychotherapists authorized by the Romanian Psychologists’ College.
Romania has two psychodrama organizations (both providing training and maintaining the psychodrama community): one based in Cluj-Napoca: Psychodrama Society “Jacob Levy Moreno” (SPJLM), and one in Sibiu: Romanian Association of Classical Psychodrama (ARPsiC), with training groups in many other cities.
The two organizations have a close collaboration, co-editing the national psychodrama journal and co-organizing the national psychodrama conference every year.

1. “J. L. Moreno” Psychodrama Society (SPJLM)

In October 1990, a “therapeutic week-end” in Covasna included a psychodrama work studio led by representatives of the Hungarian Psychodrama Association. The decisive moment was the cooperation between Psychodrama Institut für Europa (PIfE) from Germany and the Association of Transylvanian Psychologists. It led to the organization in 1991 of the first two Romanian psychodrama training groups, one in Cluj-Napoca in Romanian directed by Hilde Gött (Germany) and another in Târgu-Mureș in Hungarian directed by Klára Gallus and Kamilla Sarkady (both from Hungary).

A professional association tasked to coordinate the training programs and the psychodrama seminars in Romania was initiated after the PIfE International Conference held in 1993 in Sofia, Bulgaria. A Romanian section of the German Institute was set up on this occasion. The meeting held on February 6, 1994 marked the founding of “J.L. Moreno” Psychodrama Society.

Currently, SPJLM organizes a wide range of activities:

  • Training courses in psychodrama in Romanian and Hungarian, for the following qualifications: psychodrama assistant, psychodrama director and psychodrama psychotherapist (over 70 psychodrama training groups, most of them in Transylvania, but also in Bucharest and Constanța);
  • Supervision for all training levels and for psychodrama practitioners
  • Group dynamics seminaries, together with the Deutscher Arbeitskreis fur Gruppenpsychotherapie und Gruppendynamik (DAGG) trainers
  • Workshops for presenting and promoting psychodrama
  • Thematic groups, support groups, psychotherapy groups, courses in self-awareness / personal development for students, different professional categories, trainees of other psychotherapy schools
  • Until 2014, the association offered training courses on bibliodrama, together with trainers of the Hungarian Psychodrama Association. In 2015, the bibliodramatists trained within the frame of an autonomous program of SPJLM established the Bibliodrama Association as an independent professional entity.
  • A space for exchanging information and professional experience, for training, development and research in the psychodrama field

The training structure is built to begin with the Basic level offering the qualification as a:

  • Psychodrama assistant – authorized to conduct psychodrama groups together with a psychodrama director/psychotherapist under supervision

The Advanced level offers two qualifications, depending on the professional background of the graduating student:

  • Psychodrama director – authorized to independently conduct psychodrama groups for clients, without being a licensed psychotherapist
  • Psychodrama psychotherapist – a licensed psychotherapist who completed the advanced level, authorized to independently conduct psychodrama groups for clients and patients.

SPJLM has 24 trainers for the basic level, 18 trainers for the advanced level, 3 supervisors (also certified by PAfE as full supervisors) and 2 delegate supervisors.

Affiliations:

POTENS Project
Starting 2008, SPJLM participated in the EU Grundtvig project ”POTENS – Psychodrama on the Educational Stage”, a distinct phase in a long term plan to establish closer cooperation between psychodrama and adult education trainers. The project was initiated by Teatr Grodzki (Poland) and it was aimed to improve key competences in lifelong learning, creative expression and social skills. SPJLM was the Romanian partner of the consortium, responsible for the psychodrama expertise. The other partners were Lifelong Learning Centre, Poland; Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovacao, Portugal and Cyprus Adult Education Association, Cyprus.

The project’s final conclusions, presented at the seminar “Bridging Psychodrama and Adult Education” in Krakow, Poland in June 2010, emphasized that the most valued effect of psychodrama in adult education was the interpersonal development of the group members that promoted  personal growth, self-appraisal, spontaneity and creativity.

2. ARPsiC

Information will be provided.

Publications

Books on Psychodrama in Romanian:
Crișan, Sorin: Teatrul de la rit la psihodramă, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Dacia, 2007
Moreno, Jacob Levy: Scrieri fundamentale. Despre psihodramă, metoda de grup și spontaneitate, Editura Trei, 2009
Pașca,Dan : Grupul de psihodramă pentru dezvoltare personală, Editura Universității Transilvania, Brașov, 2013

The Romanian Psychodrama Journal is now at its 7th edition, being co-written by both psychodrama associations in Romania.

Conferences

  • 1998 Cluj-Napoca, the international conference Solving Drama Through Psychodrama
  • 2000 Gârda, Romania, the first PIfE Summer Academy The Road To One Self
  • 2003 Cluj-Napoca, the 7th PIfE International Conference Life is a Stage
  • 2006 Cluj-Napoca, 14th FEPTO Annual meeting Apollo and Dyonisos and the post-conference Theory in Practice
  • 2007 Sibiu SPJLM / ARPsiC International Conference Celebrating J.L. Moreno’s Personality

Starting 2008, the two Romanian psychodrama associations take turns in organizing the national conference: one year SPJLM is the main organizer, the following year ARPsiC leads the process.

  • 2008 Cluj-Napoca: From spring to spring
  • 2009 Brasov: Psychodrama in society: From conflict to encounter
  • 2010 Cluj-Napoca: Action and passion
  • 2011 Craiova: Sharing psychodrama, sharing experiences
  • 2012 Cluj-Napoca: Ethics and Power. The King, the Wise Man and the Fool
  • 2013 Bucharest: The Role and its Paradoxes
  • 2014 Cluj-Napoca: Memories of the Future. Transcultural and Transgenerational in Psychodrama
  • 2015 Sibiu: Love Relations from the Inner World to the Psychodrama Stage
  • 2016 Cluj-Napoca: Real and Imaginary. To Reach the Unreachable Star
  • 2017 Arad: Connections
  • 2018 Cluj: Psychodrama Applications in Therapy and Organizations
  • 2019 Brașov, topic to be announced