Critical reflections for understanding the complexity of psychodramatic theory

While being best known as a method of group psychotherapy, classical psychodrama takes on much broader and more complex meanings associated with: theory of roles, education, interactive improvisation theatre and many other contextual frameworks. The meta-theoretical context in which psychodrama is analysed in this work is first of all clinical, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic. In the past ninety years the development of psychodrama in the world has been influenced by many social events and sundry psychology movements. In her work the author describes and analyses the theory of psychodrama in the context of a behavioural and psychoanalytic perspective. She illustrates its origin and connects it with the influence of ancient drama and the developmental concept of modern European theatre in the first half of the last century, the magic/religious tradition of Indian tribes, constructivism and postmodernism, and the deterministic chaos theory. All the mentioned theoretical backgrounds have in their different ways co-created and contributed to the flexibility, integrity and universality of the psychodramatic method and are mutually intertwined in both the theoretical and the practical, clinical sense.