THE ROLE OF SPONTANEITY

Dr. Lou Montgomery

“ It takes two to know one.”
          - Gregory Bateson

     We enact a myriad of roles daily. Most of these roles are so familiar and habitual that they have become unconscious. We mistake these masks and personae for who we are. We have become trapped in the delusion that the drama of our lives constitutes our real existence. Expanding our role repertoire through play and heightened embodied expression loosens our false identifications and relaxes emotional rigidity.  By changing our attitude from one of dogma to experimentation, we learn to live spontaneous lives.

    Acting out in a facilitated group setting allows a person to experience the depths of his or her spontaneity so that he or she can take creative initiative.   Jacob Moreno, an Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher, the founder of psychodrama and the allied science of sociometry, devised group action methods that provided a context wherein old problems could be re-experienced or future dreams and subjective worlds could be given form and expression through what he called surplus reality, wherein the threshold between the conscious and unconscious was crossed.  Moreno defined psychodrama as “the science which explores the ‘truth’ by dramatic methods.”  He based psychodrama on the assumption that people are role players who pass through various stages of life. Each new life-stage represents a turning-point which presents either an opportunity for growth or a potential personal crisis. Moreno defined spontaneity as “ a new response to an old situation or an adequate response to a new situation.”

      The word role comes from the Latin word  rotilus, which means a roller. Rotilus comes from rota, which means wheel.  This wheel was the cylinder on which Roman court cases were written. So in this sense our stories, cases, verdicts, sentences, defenses, and acquittals are ideally circular, cyclical, changing, and fluid.  In the tradition of Dionysus, Jacob Moreno attempted to bring theatre and therapy together in order to free up roles that had been neurotically repressed. Moreno believed in finding new gestures so that no one had to feel powerless, as in, for instance, the role of an “extra” in someone else’s movie or a silent walk-on role.  Moreno taught the practice of role-reversal, central to psychodramatic praxis, as a concretized and ever expanding dialogic relationship with the Other.

         Contrary to the living space of reality which is often narrow and restraining, Moreno believed that the psychodramatic stage provides the protagonist with a living space that is multidimensional and maximally flexible. The auxiliary egos, the actors in psychodrama who play roles of significant others, function as a microcosm of the world, a miniature society—where it is safe to play out one’s hopes, dreams, fears, and realities. Through the technique of role reversal a protagonist has the opportunity to experience his environment, himself, and others from a different vantage point and thus break the remnants of childhood egocentricity as well as sharpen social sensitivity.

     Moreno vehemently disagreed with the premise of Western scientific medicine which believed that there is no locus of ailment beyond the individual. Rather, he felt group situations required special diagnosis and treatment and were healing agents. His philosophy aligned with that of Ibn ‘Arabi who wrote that “prayer is a dialogue in which the two parties continually exchange roles.” I willingly walk in your shoes, see through your eyes, feel through your heart, leave the chair of my position and come sit in yours. Most importantly, I see myself and my words and my behaviors’ effect from your point of view.  The visceral effect of the kind of sudden spontaneous knowing which can surface in an honest role reversal can be electrifying, dismantling fortresses of inner defenses, and freeing up years of arrested emotional development.

      The act of dramatic role reversal is the most potent practice I know of to engender true compassion-- not just as a wannabe mental exercise but as embodied reality where real shifts can take place.  And role reversal is in no way restricted to other humans. For me, a humbling revelation arose from doing this work came when I realized how insanely anthropomorphic we people are. Having over time cultivated the humility to act out  any perspective, some  of my most instructive and emotionally moving dialogues have been with mountains, redwood trees, pond scum, dust motes, and viruses.

     How we come to know ourselves proceeds by way of story, which serves as a guide.  When I am guiding someone through a personal psychodrama, the unfolding story itself shows the way, hopefully to a new way of seeing.  In psychodrama the story is enacted physically, emotionally, and verbally.  Re-experiencing the scenes in the story allows learning to take place and repressed affect to be freed; it gives voice to other multiple perspectives. As the auxiliaries in psychodrama embody the various personas in the drama and enact their gestures and words, an underlying coherence and connecting pattern of experience is expressed through action, image, and language. Being heard and seen in this way becomes a redemptive experience for the protagonist, auxiliaries, audience, and director.  The deep story embedded in the drama is given voice, silence, gesture, and metaphor that allows alchemical change. 

      I am reminded of a powerful psychodrama in which I was the protagonist.  The drama was a reenactment of the story of “Jonah and the Whale,” which at the time felt like the story that was living through me.  Prior to this enactment I had felt “swallowed up” by a “whale” of shame and grief.  I was feeling unfairly tortured and that my situation was quite hopeless. ( That a negative complex, or neurosis, had been activated goes without saying; but our complexes, Jung understood, fuel our life dramas and the cast of characters we attract.)

     Other players took the roles as the “disasters” of my relational life forming a “trainwreck” of failures.  As a concretized midlife inventory, the picture looked bleak indeed!  Two other players took the roles of Mother God and Father God and stood on chairs overlooking the “wreck” of my life. As the character Jonah I argued, sobbed, and raged at the Deity who had been “persecuting” me. In role reversals with Father/Mother God, however, as the argument deepened, I discovered  both the victimized and childish attitude of my “Jonah” self, who was rebelliously relating to God as a punitive parent, and the impersonal transcendent aspect of my inner God self who kept telling my “Jonah” persona, “Don’t take it personally.”

     In that psychodrama I recovered a lot of my faith and dignity as well as the wonderful gift of comic relief. My heartfelt but melodramatic hysterics were hilariously funny to the audience—even as they cried with me in sympathetic resonance. What is important here, and why I relate the story, is that it was the wrestling with the God character, which could also be seen as the active dialogic struggle with an torturing inner daemon, “going to the mat” together so to speak, is what freed up my energy, released my spontaneity, and restored my joie de vie.  Sean O Faolain wrote that, “ All writing, in the end, is the writer’s argument with God.”

     When the poesis, image, or action  of the drama or story is reflected in enactment, one’s experience is validated and deepened.  One feels reassured of his or her place in the world, is reconnected to others, and feels  less isolated. As the dramas are acted our in community, suffering finds context, a sense of identity is concretized, and one discovers fresh ways to navigate through one’s life. Much of what is “therapeutic” in psychodrama is simply facilitating the group’s spontaneity so that the untold hidden story in the story can emerge and be engaged. Moreno believed that “because every individual flows over with spontaneity, spontaneity flows between individuals.”  Spontaneity is rooted in the dynamics of action and derives from an interactive milieu and here-and-now change.

    Psychodrama’s goal is the development of that part of the psyche that could be called the “choosing self.” It addresses the concept of role flexibility and the idea that one can rework one’s life as if it were a dramatic situation where one is the playwright capable of creating responsible actions and new possibilities. Psychodrama and archetypal psychology both recognize the dramatic genius of the psyche. In both praxes, trunkfuls of images, masks, metaphors, costumes, and scripts are opened up as we rework the stories of our lives.

      Dionysus, the god of many roles, invites us to play, increase our spontaneity and enliven our creative options. As we come to know Dionysus as Mask, we dis-identify with rigid fixed roles.  The danger in a culturally defined life stage, is to become “role locked.”  This means being frozen into narrowly defined stereotypes within inflexible behavioral and emotional parameters. Role lock is often self-imposed as culturally determined and very often is not perceived as abnormal from within the perspective of the role.  Often we have to see ourselves played back by others, one of the key premises of psychodrama, in order to recognize the joyless strict limitations we straight-jacket ourselves into.  Through objective witnessing, stepping out of the drama in order to see it for what it is, solutions previously hidden, because we “couldn’t see the forest for the trees,” are absurdly obvious. How many times have I stood alongside a protagonist who has just witnessed the ludicrousness of a situation graciously portrayed by others and who then burst into an incredulous gasping “Oh my God!”-- only to rush back into the action and remedy the dysfunction on the spot!

     A limited role repertoire implies a lack of spontaneity, which in turn feeds anxiety and depression.  As I reflect back over the years in which I have been a protagonist in all manner of psychodramas, I see how I have gradually freed myself from being locked in negative roles of silent submission to abusive partners, tied up in toxic parental bonds, being a self-effacing wall flower, shame filled codependent, or righteous impatient know- it- all. I have made radical shifts from being in a role which defined itself as terrified to take up any space at all to one of infinite expansion, from being paralyzed around confronting an abuser to outrageous champion of myself. I have journeyed from deprived infant to bounteous mother of myself. And through acting out I have discovered heretofore unknown positive roles: Magical Shape Shifter, Queen of the Underworld, Starship Visionary, Lightning Arrow Singing Woman, Cosmic Cowgirl, and Full Bowl of Compassion.

       Many people, of course, have had similar role shifts  in therapy or on self-reflective spiritual retreat. But there is something especially magical and lasting about being seen and heard in-the-moment, where the insight is not only witnessed, but reflected back in a group that has just made the dramatic journey with me, that amplifies the new role in every sensorial mode.  Every cell in my body recognizes this novel mode of being and can quickly access it again.  Within the safety of the group I rehearse new roles and train for an upgrade in reality.

      All of my plays are in some ways, scripted psychodramas. I intentionally take on roles inclusive of both sexes, all ages, real historical figures, figures out of my imagination and dream life, characters who are ridiculous, grotesque, offensive, charming, seductive, in agony, in ecstasy, ugly, beautiful—as wide a gamut as my imagination and talent can encompass.  Whereas on the one hand the natural performer in me understands the entertainment value of variety, even shock, performance also serves psychologically as a form of both new role “training” and old role “relief.”  From the many psychodramas I have directed, one comes to mind that exemplifies how even deep culturally engrained locked roles can be freed up.

      Several years ago I was teaching in St, Petersburg at a conference where I had about fifty Russian speaking participants attending a Dream Theatre workshop. Conducting workshops in Eastern Europe had been teaching me a lot about relinquishing control and letting go of any need to hide behind an authoritative role. I was so completely out of my league linguistically and culturally that I was forced to access the archetypal Fool and just keep showing up. My scripts, techniques, assumptions, and theories became mere springboards for improvisation in the moment. If I was learning anything, it was that Serendipity is the most fantastic traveling companion and the open heart the only map one needs. This group psychodrama, which was enacted in Russian with a translator, embodied a common theme for everyone there-- breaking free of oppression..

The protagonist, a handsome man in his late thirties, sets the scene from his dream.

There is a national heroic statue with nameless faceless crowds hurrying by.  Then

he enters a huge grey building that is a Kafka like bureaucratic maze. After

traversing the confining labyrinth he comes to a shut window. On the other side is

the sea which is beckoning him. But in order to escape the window he must not only

get through the maze but free himself from his clinging mother and obligations to

the State.

The whole group is cast into the dream drama, taking turns playing the statue,

crowd, walls of bureaucracy, window of opportunity, enticing Sirens of the sea,

maternal voices of obligation, duty to the State, etc. By role reversing with every

aspect of the dream, a careful and poignant process, the young man finds himself at

a huge choice point—whether to stay in his old dutiful role or run to the sea.

The drama is charged with tension because his dilemma represents everyone’s position being locked in roles of duty,

submission, guilt, and resentment. The whole audience is in an amazing sympathetic

resonance with this drama; absolutely riveted, the whole group holds its breath together.

 At last after a cathartic moment of speaking his truth in turn to the mother, the bureauracy, and Russia itself, the protagonist somersaults out of the window and, weeping, runs to the arms of the players playing the sea. Practically all fifty participants break into tears of relief and resounding cheers. His embrace of this new liberating role infuses the whole group with delicious hope, for in the dream enactment they have all been training for untried roles of possibility.

     As a decolonizing psychological move there is merit for performer and audience alike as myriad roles are taken up, exposed, and shed. I would like to think that my role repertoire is inexhaustible and that I am always training for new untried roles.  Conversely, true freedom entails being uninvested in role appearance or role attachment. I do my best to grant myself virtually unlimited license to try on any role, knowing that any one I find repulsive or resist probably holds an important key to my psychological freedom.  As artist therapist I try to educate in the sense of educare, “to lead out” the audience.  The spectators are being trained or entrained into spontaneity as I publicly deconstruct and reinvent myself. If there is any magic “fountain of youth.” I believe Moreno’s applied role theory is just that—the fluid and mercurial antidote to feeling fossilized or stagnant.

ENDING THE DRAMA

“ To study the self is to forget the self.” Zen Master Dogen

     In my work over the years, I have tried taking the practice of role expansion and acting out a step further—to move beyond personality based psychotherapy and personal expression  into deep spiritual practice.  As potent as dramatic enactment is—in freeing creativity by enacting stuck roles, rehearsing new untried ones, observing ourselves played by others, and watching the Story from the viewpoint of the Witness—there is the sense that we are, in the words of Ram Dass, still “rearranging the furniture inside the prison cell.” As long as there is identification with the Story, we are subject to the effects of its endless twists and turns and are thus always readjusting and regaining balance and equilibrium. To this end, exhausted by the effort it takes most of us to continually dust ourselves off and get back in the saddle or, for that matter, just stay mounted, I have developed a workshop  I call “ The Drama to End the Drama.” Actually, the workshop title should read more accurately “ The Drama to End the Melodrama.”

     Why should we be remotely interested in ending the drama if we revel in it so? It is because when we peel back the melodramatic layers of narcissistic self involvement, taking ourselves seriously, or believing that our versions of fiction are real, our core essence is available and shines forth. As we continue to make the unconscious conscious and begin to integrate life’s experiences in a different way, there is a deep knowing which resides in the mind, body, and all five senses. Essence is not what we do but what we are at the core—pure energy and radiant life force. No Thing and No Body.

      What I notice is that whereas through acting out, new role training can strengthen the ego, it can just as effectively relativize the ego’s perspective.  And the more the ego’s inflated position is brought into appropriate scale, the more radical the perceptual shifts and the more new doorways in consciousness open.  Stepping out of the drama encompasses discovery of the soul’s purpose, a rekindling of passion, and a direct experience of the Self within the context of enlivened community.  One of the most important insights gleaned from ending the drama is learning the difference between life’s inevitable pain and unnecessary suffering. Suffering is what we add to the basic suchness of life, which always includes pain, through judgment, interpretation, and a kind of demand against life –insisting that it be other than what it is.  It is the ultimate waste of resource and in the end, completely unsustainable; yet how often do we pay attention to this inner ecology.     

     One of my most cherished teachers, Ramana Maharshi, perhaps the greatest of the jnana (meaning knowledge) yoga Hindu mystics, was known mostly for his teaching of Self-inquiry. The teachings of this mystic, who mostly abode in silence, inspired in me  the idea of using drama to end the drama. Ramana taught that inquiry into the Self, which is changless, unlimited, pure consiousness results through continual meditation in the annihilation of the ego. The ego is synonymous with thought and is both the root of all illusion and the cause of bondage.  However, when one turns the mind backwards and through contemplating the question “Who Am I ?” traces all thought back to its primal state, one discovers through direct experience that all thoughts arise from the first thought, the “I” thought. Beneath the “I” thought is continuous unbroken awareness, the substratum of all existence, in which all of creation rises and falls. All suffering occurs because we are ignorant of the all pervasive Self and are instead obsessed with obtrusive thoughts.  The phenomenal world appears to us like a panorama in a dream and we mistakenly ascribe to it as well as our physical selves, independent and objective existence. But if we directly experience the Self, we perceive beyond a doubt that this Maya, or manifest world, is non-existent. Ramana taught that to search for the Self externally was like the shepherd searching for the lamb he already carries on his shoulders. Be steady and continuous investivation into the nature of mind, its is transformed or disappears as a fire of burning camphor, into That to which the “I” refers, which is , in fact, the Self.  The mind that remains at the end of the inquiry is Brahma. The question “Who am I? “ continually asked eventually reveals the Atman who will be found shining as “I, I”  in the lotus of the heart. 

     What ending the drama entails is simply stepping outside of the whole box we call our biography or personality or situation and witnessing it all from the perspective of the Self versus the ego. The technique of the enactment may look just the same; yet the vantage point of the observer shifts to the most impersonal and expansive. Sometimes I help the protagonist witness their drama ( and I often whip up the auxiliaries to cartoon like exaggeration) from the perspective of a spaceship or at least a spyglass, the message being-- get some bloody distance!  I put players speaking in the third person, the role of the family pet, the gods on Mount Olympus, their beleaguered therapist, their great grandchild, themselves looking back at present time at the hour of death, anything to get beyond the sticky personal fiction and see it for what it is—just a story we mostly make up. While peeling back one’s core identification can momentarily sting like ripping off a bandaid, once witnessed from a distance, there is relief, humor, and the return of sanity.

I often think of it as a three-ring circus encompassing everything that is going on inter and well as intra psychically.  When the whole constellation is outwardly visible, it is much easier to discern what are simply the givens of our incarnation versus all the spin, hype, melodrama, and petulant adolescent habit. From a detached vantage point, no one is “doing “anything to anyone else.  The lela, or divine play, is just playing out and the Law of Attraction is the Ringmaster.  The focus in ending the drama becomes one of witnessing versus changing, letting go as opposed to fixing, and seeing life as the dream that is dreaming us.  And most important of all --taking it lightly.