Psychological and Social

Psychodrama and sociodrama. Psychodramatic roles and social roles.  What is the difference?

Understandings I have about what is not the difference:  Psyche is “inner” and social is “outer”.

Psychodrama is about social and cultural atom.  Is there a psychological atom? I don’t think so.

I have a story that the might be a clue about when the psyche is at work. This happens often, and again recently I co-led a group.  We spent an hour or two warming up to the group (we had little idea who would be there).  We made a good connection.  One way was that we enjoyed discussion was about anger, how to work with it in a psychodrama? The other fun thing was sharing the tv programmes we liked.

The first words in the group were how to deal with anger.  And the first drama had quite a focus on Netflix.

I have always put this down to there being a sociometric matrix at work.  It does seem like Jung’s synchronicity and “objective psyche”? Even when we use the word psyche for that it a SOCIOmetric phenomenon I think.


Psychodramatic – and psychological have the greek word soul for soul at their root. The breath, the butterfly. That which has little material weight, like images, imagination, stories, fantasies and dreams. These things are deep in our being our history, archetypal… and some way collective, they come alive in art, language and theatre.

I keep coming back to psyche is social. Or to make more sense, the social is psychological. The social can be seen as the space between, as the image as the soul, or the heart.


A sociodrama has a sociodramatic question.

A psychodrama has a concern.

Both are questions about life, the psychodramatic question is more about individual dilemmas and healing. A protagonist can do the work and others can learn from that for themselves so a psychodrama usually has a protagonist. However the question can be tackled by the group, it is then a psychodrama is group centered.

A sociodramatic question is about the group, the world, about US. So Mostly a sociodrama does not have a protagonist. But maybe the question is best explored by a person who is living that social dilemma, then Walter have a protagonist centered sociodrama.

A useful distinction but not enough.

Both are drama, both bring to life something of the soul, perhaps the soul of the world, or soul in the world. Both can concretise the imaginal, possible futures hidden images.

Some moments in sociodramas I recall were exquisite moments theatre. Moving and uncovering the depth of life. Full of soul.

Maybe it is not useful to make any hard and fast distinctions about the socius and the psyche. Both are there as we seek to explore ourselves in the world.

In a group it would be helpful to move freely along the psychosocial continuum.

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Sociodrama – Resources


Rory Remer, Ph.D., Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Kentucky
Abstract: The original formulation of Morenean sociometry has been, for the most part, modified. Consequently, a question arises about the effectiveness of that formulation relative to its derivatives. In this article, I make a delineation between Morenean (strong) sociometry and other adaptationse, aiming at a revitalization of Moreno’s theory.

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