IF WE CAN SEE ANOTHER person as they see themselves, if we can experience life as they experience it, we can usually tolerate that person as a human being on this earth.” So says John Nolte, the eminent psychodramatist. He says our emotional apparatus will vibrate to the emotional apparatus of another in the same way that, if we pluck the G note on a piano, the G note on every other piano in the room will begin to vibrate. He insists that there is no such thing as information, only experiences, feelings, actions, and emotions. And as we have seen, facts are only words, mere symbols for what we have experienced and felt. Emotion bursts up from the motion, from the action, whatever it may be. In the end, the process is to go into the self to discover both the self and the other.
So we wish to discover the whole truth of, say, a case involving a fifteen-year-old boy charged in juvenile court with the rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. The boy has confessed to the crime, so what more is to be done but to make the best possible deal with the juvenile authorities? But something seems amiss here. Girls are often physically older than boys of the same age, and this girl is a year older still than Buddy, but they are about the same size. They ride home together each day on the school bus and live next door to each other. They’re friends. But Nancy has a boyfriend of her own.
Nancy came home one day with a bite mark on her cheek and bruises on her arms. Her parents cornered the girl, who denied that her boyfriend, two years older than she, was responsible. Finally she blamed Buddy. Because of the mother’s concern that her daughter might get pregnant, the mother took steps, but by the next day no semen samples were available for the police.
Buddy’s parents are in the throes of a divorce. They excel at despising each other, and are vindictive and cruel to the core. In the custody battle between them the mother claims that the father has sexually abused Buddy’s twelve-year-old sister. The father denies any such abuse, sexual or otherwise. During the divorce proceedings a court-appointed social worker interviewed Buddy, now living with his father. Buddy admitted the rape of his sister. The mother is insistent that it was her husband who abused the daughter, not her son.
Employing the psychodramatic method to discover the story, we might gather a group in our office, maybe four or five laypersons or lawyers who’ve agreed to help us.
Choosing the drama. As in the making of a movie, someone will serve as the director and will ask the lawyer responsible for the case what scene, what event or occurrence is important from the lawyer’s standpoint to his case. Let’s think of it as a screenplay. Where would the movie begin? The scene could begin with Nancy, who is telling her mother of the alleged rape. It could begin with Buddy’s mother or father and their vitriolic battle over custody. Let’s say the lawyer wants to start with Buddy, because the lawyer believes that Buddy’s story has something to do with Buddy’s parents capturing the children as the loot of their war. The person appointed director will ask the lawyer who will defend the case to play the part of Buddy as he imagines and understands him. Then the director will ask the lawyer to pick one of the assembled group to play the part of Buddy’s mother, who we call an “auxiliary.”
We understand that we cannot know whether any part of the play accurately corresponds to all of the facts. What we do know in psychodrama is that our life’s experiences and those of our teammates will help us discover the several potential stories that may lead us to a better understanding of the truth. How is it to be a boy of fifteen who is the center of the storm between his parents and who is concurrently being charged as a serial rapist? In the lawyer’s several interviews with Buddy, the boy was frightened, confused, and willing to say little more than “I don’t know.” But perhaps we can begin to understand Buddy a little better if we play through some of the scenes he may have experienced.
Setting the scene. We’re told by the lawyer that the first scene he would like to explore will be between Buddy and his mother. It will take place in the kitchen in the mother’s small, poorly furnished apartment. In setting the scene, the director asks the lawyer to tell us what he (as Buddy) looks like. He says Buddy is smallish, thin, has white skinny arms, and a head larger than most kids his age, with a mop of wild blond hair on top. He wears thick glasses and his eyes look very large through the lenses. He is wearing a T-shirt with the picture of a current rap singer and he has a small pierced earring in his left ear.
The director asks the lawyer to show us the location of the kitchen table and chairs—maybe using some loose chairs or a small table that are available in the room where the work is proceeding. We will learn the location of the kitchen sink and counter. In response to the director’s questions, the lawyer will show us the doorway and describe what is on the wall and on the refrigerator door, so that when he is finished we have a mental picture of this kitchen. Buddy (the lawyer) sits down at the kitchen table across from his mother, one of our auxiliaries.
Reversing roles. Our appointed director now asks the lawyer playing the role of Buddy, “What’s going on between you and your mother, Buddy?” Buddy may say, “I don’t know.” The director immediately asks the lawyer playing the role of Buddy to reverse roles and to now become the mother, so that the lawyer playing Buddy and the auxiliary playing the mother change places at the kitchen table. The lawyer, once playing Buddy, is now playing the mother sitting in the mother’s place. The director will ask, “What does the mother say?” The lawyer now playing the mother says, “You know very well, Buddy, that your father is a beast and has done those nasty things with your little sister.” Immediately, the director again has the lawyer and auxiliary switch roles and places at the table so that the lawyer is Buddy again and the auxiliary the mother.
“No. Daddy never did that. He never did that. I did that,” Buddy says.
“You are just covering for that man, aren’t you?” the auxiliary, as mother, accuses. Other members of the team may stand behind the mother and speak as if they were she. For example, one person as an auxiliary to the mother may add (as if she is speaking as the mother), “You know that your father is trying to steal you from me, and I’m not going to let him do it. You better tell the truth, Buddy. And you know the truth is that your father did that to your little sister. Your sister said she told you so.” At this point two people are playing the role of mother, as ideas spontaneously come to mind. More team members can come up and, in this way, double for the mother as they may perceive additional input from the mother’s point of view.
More than one person can also play the role of Buddy. Another auxiliary may come up and stand behind the lawyer who has been playing Buddy and, as Buddy, provide additional input from Buddy’s point of view. “I never did it, and Daddy never did it. Sissy is just trying to get Daddy into trouble. She told me that she wants to stay with you and that she can if she says that Daddy did that to her.” As many scenarios as come to the fertile minds of the participants can be played out here, the lawyer reversing roles with the mother as often as may be necessary to insert additional facts that are known only to the lawyer, and the auxiliaries adding to these facts as they may imagine them by doubling behind the mother and Buddy.
Expanding the inquiry. After we have exhausted the possibilities with Buddy and his mother we may want to find out what might have been going on with Buddy and his father. Again, the lawyer may take the role of Buddy and choose one of the auxiliaries to play the role of the father.
“You know I didn’t do anything wrong with your sister, Buddy,” the auxiliary playing the role of the father might begin.
No answer from Buddy.
“You better tell the cops that you did it, or you know what will happen—they will put me in jail and you will have to go live with your mother.”
“I don’t want to live with her. I want to live with you, Daddy.”
“Then you better tell the cops and anybody that asks you that you did that to your sister.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, you better tell them anyway, or you know what’s going to happen to you.”
Maybe this conversation took place or maybe it didn’t. All we know is that the possibility exists. For the first time, the lawyer, having played through the role of his child client, Buddy, may begin to appreciate the possible conflicts the child is under, the child’s pain, the child’s fear. He has a fresher view of what it must be like to experience the feelings of this child that the lawyer never internalized before, because he had been thinking, not feeling, his way through the case.
But what about the alleged rape by Buddy of the older girl, Nancy? Something’s wrong there—the disparity of age and physical development for one thing. The director may want the same lawyer to play that one out a little more. The director will lead the lawyer through the scene setting in the living room of the girl’s house. Her parents are at work. Perhaps the scene will begin with Buddy and Nancy sitting on the couch together.
We remember that the girl claims that Buddy forced her. Yet she was wearing jeans at the time and was older than and as strong as Buddy. We also remember that Buddy has admitted this rape. The director may have the lawyer, in the role of Buddy, now play out the alleged rape scene. The lawyer picks someone to play the role of Nancy.
The lawyer, as Buddy: “You ever do it?”
Nancy, played by a team member: “What?”
“You know.”
“Know what?”
She knows. She is coy and she puts a hand on Buddy’s leg.
“You want to?”
We remember that Nancy had a boyfriend. The director has the lawyer immediately switch roles and become Nancy—the auxiliary becoming Buddy for the moment. The lawyer, as Nancy, says, “I already got a boyfriend. We do it all the time. I’m not going to do it with a little shrimp like you.”
The soliloquy. The discovery process is spontaneous. The soliloquy can be introduced at any point when the director wants to examine the inner working of our protagonist’s mind. Perhaps at this point the director can have the lawyer switch back and become Buddy once more, because we want to hear what’s going on in Buddy’s mind when he’s told that he’s a little shrimp not fit to play like that with Nancy. The director walks around the room with the lawyer, who now is encouraged to speak as Buddy. As they walk together the director asks the lawyer, as Buddy, to say his thoughts out loud. In his soliloquy we hear Buddy say, “She doesn’t think I’m as good as her boyfriend. She’s the only friend I have. I’ll show her.” Or he might be so devastated that he says, “I have to get out of here,” and runs home not having touched Nancy. Or he might say, “I want to continue trying to get her to do it with me like they do in the movies.” As Buddy speaks his soliloquy aloud, others in the room may walk behind him, adding their own ideas as to what Buddy’s thoughts might have been.
Letting the drama set its own course. We, as directors, can go further by setting another scene, the one when the police interrogate Buddy after Nancy’s mother makes the rape complaint against the boy. In setting the scene, the lawyer, as Buddy, will show us the interrogation room, the cement walls painted white, the proverbial lights aimed at the accused child, the bars at one end of the room. There is no escape. The lawyer still plays Buddy, and a team member plays the cop.
Cop: Come clean, kid, you better tell me the truth or it can go damn hard on you. You did that girl, Nancy, didn’t you?
Buddy: I didn’t do nothin’ ta her.
Cop: You want to stay on living with your dad, or do you want to go somewhere else? (Intimating that the boy would be taken from his father—maybe sent to his mother. Maybe to some other horrible place.)
Buddy: I want to live with my dad. (He begins to cry.)
Cop: You better come clean, then.
Buddy: (Says nothing.)
Having heard the whole drama, the team members can add further ideas about Buddy and the cop. One team member as an auxiliary playing the cop does just that.
Cop: You want to be a man? Well, Nancy didn’t think you were man enough to do this, but I think you were. (The cop puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder.) So why don’t you just tell me you did it and we can make everything all right again.
Pretending and learning. In many ways we are like children playing “Let’s pretend.” But we know by having been children, and having observed our own and others’, that children often tell us truths we might not otherwise see. When we become as children, and play as children, we empower ourselves to search our deeper selves to discover truths that have otherwise evaded us. We never experience role playing in this psychodramatic method without learning something new.
How does this work? First, the lawyer gets in touch with his own feelings and those of his client. He begins to remember what it’s like to be a fifteen-year-old who is confused about who he is and what his role with friends and family should be. He remembers his blooming naiveté. By becoming the client and playing the various other roles, the lawyer achieves insights that he likely wouldn’t have understood before. He begins to care for his client, who has become a person to him, not just a name on a kid whose most informative statement is “I don’t know.”
We will have the team furnish their further insights as we download what we’ve learned. Maybe the father did abuse the eleven-year-old daughter and the boy is covering for him. But no one on the team now feels certain that Buddy is that evil serial rapist he was once made out to be. Maybe Buddy did sexually molest his little sister. But everyone on the team is pretty sure that he wasn’t guilty of raping Nancy. And, what is rape and what is consensual sex between children of this age?
The scope of the cross-examination of Nancy and her mother is now apparent. Nancy may have had a reason to cover for her boyfriend. We need to find out more about the boyfriend and about the problem, if any, between Nancy and her mother concerning that relationship. We can play out that scene if we wish, preparatory for the time when Nancy is on the stand and a thorough cross-examination can be had.
And what about Buddy’s twelve-year-old sister? What does she have to say about all of this? She is with her mother. Is it possible that the mother has manipulated the child into accusing her father, and the child, feeling abandoned by the father, is willing to blame him based on some childish idea of justice? At this point in discovering the story, Buddy is as likely innocent of all of the claims made against him as he is guilty. The role-playing has opened up many divergent trails that need exploring before a fifteen-year-old boy is convicted, his confession notwithstanding.
As we remember, all of us have had experiences that in some way relate to those of every other person in the world. Few crimes exist, however evil and depraved, that in some diminished and muted form do not resonate in our reptilian beginnings. By playing out the various roles in Buddy’s case, the lawyer understands both his client and his opponent in a way that would have been impossible, but for his playing the parts of the several participants in this family tragedy. The various scenarios may not exist, in fact, but they open up avenues for further investigation and study.
Where once the prosecution had an open-and-shut case against a confessed rapist, the possibility of the boy’s innocence will now be investigated. And even if he were guilty of the rape of both his sister and Nancy, we have new insights as to how a child whose fragile psyche has been twisted by the brutal wrenching apart of this family might act out his anger against females over whom he could possibly exercise some domination. No matter how the case is resolved, it will be a different, more complete case than the one we first examined.
For the nonlawyer—using the psychodramatic method to discover the story. The methods we have discussed can be used to discover the story by laypersons in the out-of-court case. Let’s take the case of a worker who wants better working conditions at the plant. Suppose four or five of his fellow employees gather at his home one evening. One who has read and understood the methods we’ve discussed can act as the director. The employee who wants to bring about change can play his own role. Someone else can play the boss. We can already imagine what will be happening.
The first scene could be between the boss and the employee. But a more important scene might be between the boss and his wife. He is telling her how all of this pressure is coming down on him, how he is afraid the unrest at the plant is getting out of control, and how the employees are beginning to gather together and talk about the health problem there. He thinks he ought to find a way to can the employee who seems to be the leader. Someone will play the wife. Someone the boss. There will be auxiliaries’ input for both.
We may also play out the scene between the boss and his supervisor. He assures his supervisor that he has things under control. Maybe in the course of the play we will see a better way to argue the case—avenues that had not been apparent before. What will happen when the issue gets up to the CEO? What will the board say? Can we see the CEO trying to explain this to the board? When all of the scenes are set and played out, we will know a lot more about how this issue should be handled and how it can be presented in a way more likely to succeed.
Where does the story begin and end? Whatever the facts of the story, we must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Where does our story begin?
We’ll make that decision after we’ve discovered the facts. In the case of a business decision, perhaps we start with workers creating the product, or the managers who are in charge of selling it. The story could begin with the product itself. But most likely, the story will begin with the customer. Without the customer, all else becomes irrelevant. In the criminal case in which we are defending Buddy, the story may begin with the war between Buddy’s parents for the custody of their children.
Our gathering of people who have aided us in discovering the story will help decide where the story begins and what its components will be. The greatest minds are not the ones that produce those grand, pedantic propositions, the ones with that bulging, sweat-covered, intellectual brawn. The most coveted minds are those that can absorb the fertile ideas of others and put them to work. No single individual can discover every flower in the forest, nor can he fully understand what the law calls “the whole truth.”
How is a drama constructed? A rule among moviemakers says that drama is divided into three parts, the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. Putting the rule in its simplest terms, Sam Goldwyn said, “We introduce the hero, we chase him up a tree, and then we get him down again”—the beginning, the middle, and the end—the setup, the conflict, and the resolution.
In Buddy’s case, we might see in the setup a smallish, skinny, frightened kid sitting over in the corner cringing as his parents battle. We’ll see him on the school bus with his friend, Nancy; we’ll see how she’s older and toys with Buddy, who is totally infatuated with her. This is the setup. Now Buddy is chased up the tree when he is charged with the rape of Nancy. When the facts come together, perhaps Buddy will shinny down the tree and be saved. The formula is good for nearly every story.
In a trial the jury completes the story. The defendant in a criminal case and the plaintiff in a personal injury suit are presented to the jury. Then they find themselves up the tree when the defendant is charged with a crime or the plaintiff suffers injuries as the result of the negligence of another. The jury renders its verdict, which ends the story happily with an acquittal in the criminal case—or a conviction that converts the story to a tragedy. So, too, in the civil case. The injured plaintiff is awarded adequate damages or is turned away.
I always present my case as a story. The old saw, truth is stranger than fiction, holds here. The story must be truthful or else, as we have seen, the case will surely be lost. The beginning, the setup, as in nearly every movie, introduces us to the hero (our client) in ways that permit us to care about him. Then we experience the difficulty he is in, the conflict, and finally we map out for the jury the resolution, the ending we wish the jurors to adopt.
In our hearts we all love to hear and to tell a good story. Stories, well told, are the engines by which we win.