The education is held in the educational and experiential groups. The sessions last 180 or 240 minutes, they are held once per week or in more intensive periods three times per week. Each session consists of three parts. The first part is the warming up in which spontaneity and creativity increase, the group process, the mutual relations between the group members, the sociometric choices, the needs of the group and the individuals are followed. In due course the parallel between the events outside the group and ones inside the group are noticed. Most moved individuals become the protagonists. The scenes from the protagonist’s life are played on the psychodrama scene with the other group members help who can play the important persons from the protagonist’s life and at the same time the events and the interpersonal relations inside the group and outside the group are played and explored. The important scenes and the relationships which did not happen but the protagonist needed them to happen as well as the wishes, fantasies, dreams, incomplete memories which are called surplus reality are also explored. The protagonist reverses his roles with the important persons in his life. The group members may take part as the doubles when they try to express their emphatic feelings with the protagonist which the protagonist did not display. When the action part on the scene in the session ends, the group members return to the circle and share with the protagonist and group their experience while playing the role as well as their life experience which can be similar or different from the protagonist’s. This final part of a psychodrama session is called sharing. After 100 hours of the experience in the educational group, the fourth part of psychodrama session is introduced which is called the process in which the students and the director analyse the happening in the previous session.

The students are gradually beginning to lead the part of the process and the action warming up searching for such type of warming up which would correspond to the group development. So students are gradually taking over the role of the director. First they set with the protagonist one or two scenes and so they lead the psychodrama vignette (short drama). In further development of the educational and experiential groups, the students lead a series of scenes with the protagonist in order to take over completely leading of a psychodrama session from the very beginning later. Following up the group development, they continue with the adequate warming up, help in choosing the protagonist, set and develop the psychodrama scenes with the protagonist and at the end they lead the sharing. The student director later writes the papers about the dramas he was leading or in which he was the protagonist.

The education is divided into three degrees and each degree has 270 hours respectively in an experiential and educational group, in total 810 hours. During the first and the second degree of the education, the SPA students have additional psychotherapy outside the psychodrama educational and experiential group, too. This is an additional experience in group analysis which takes 67 sessions lasting 90 minutes respectively (134 hours) in small groups consisting of about 10 students. The group analysis in small groups is led by the group analysts Tija Despotović and Marija Vezmar. The students also have another 40 sessions each lasting 90 minutes in median group consisting of approximately 20 students. This makes up another 80 hours. Ljilja Milivojevic, the group analyst, leads the median group. Totally, students have 214 hours of group analysis as an additional psychotherapy and as an additional experience in different method of group psychotherapy.

The students also have 400 hours of theory which consists of 45 till 50 sessions lasting 120 minutes. Ljilja Milivojević teaches the theory of the psychodynamic psichotherapy and group analysis (15 sessions) and Jasna Veljković and Dušan Potkonjak teach the psychodrama theory consisting of 15 sessions. The trainer Slavko Mačkić and the visiting trainer Aleksandra Novaković teach 5 sessions of theory, too. The students lead on their own in accordance with the obligatory literature another 40 sessions of theory each lasting 120 minutes in students study groups. Two students prepare a detailed paper from the theory for each session of theory and each student prepares a short draft from theory about 2 pages long. In addition to the papers from theory, the students ought to write the additional papers about their own experience in psychodrama as well as the papers of analysis of the psychodrama sessions for each exam. The first and the second degree require total of 9 papers and the third degree requires a detailed clinical paper, i. e. the analysis of the group sessions which a student led after passing the first and the second degree exam. For each written paper from theory, for the papers about personal experience in psychodrama and group analysis student gets additional hours of theory. That means that students have 50 sessions of theory with the trainers and still another 40 sessions of theory in students study groups. This makes up 234 hours of theory and the rest of 166 hours of theory the students get for the written papers.

After having passed the first and the second degree exam, the students should lead in total 80 psychodrama sessions in the therapeutic group with the patients. Each session lasts from 120 till 180 minutes which means that student should lead the groups at least 160 or 240 hours under supervision. The supervision consists of a group most often and it takes place on every 14 days. It is led by a trainer supervisor, totally 40 sessions lasting 90 minutes respectively which makes up 80 hours of supervision with a trainer. Students also lead mutually another 40 sessions of peer supervision lasting 90 minutes which is another 80 hours of supervision. After having passed the first and the second degree exam, the sudents lead 80 psychodrama group sessions either by themselves or in a therapeutic pair with fellow student. This is 240 hours of group leading. Additional 40 sessions of supervision with a trainer (80 hours) and 40 sessions of student peer supervision (80 hours) with this 240 hours make up totally 400 hours of group leading under supervision.

The students should be older than 24 years, they should apply detailed personal and professional biography and they should finish or be near the end of the University studies in medicine, psychology, special education, education, sociology as well as other faculties which the Serbian Union of Psychotherapist Societies recognizes. There is a possibility that the Serbian Union of Psychotherapist Societies will pass the programme of the differential exams from psychology and psychiatry for the students who did not graduate from some of the mentioned five faculties in future. The students who did not graduate from some of the mentioned faculties can pursue their education in the non-clinical programme of psychodrama because the education in SPA Moreno has both clinical and non-clinical programme. Students younger than 24 years can acquire their experience in the introductory, preparatory groups. Before the beginning of the education, the applicant students will have an interview. They should enclose the detailed personal biography written psichotherapeutically as much as possible as well as the detailed professional biography with possible previous experience in psychodrama and psychotherapy and the possible experience in clinical work.

The total sum of hours during the education consists of: 810 hours in experiential and educational psychodrama group, 214 hours of group analysis as the additional psychotherapy, 400 hours of theory which consist of 50 sessions with the trainers, 40 sessions of students study groups, papers from theory and other papers. A student should lead by himself or in a therapeutic pair 80 sessions (240 hours) and have 160 hours of supervision. This makes up 400 hours of group leading under supervision. This is totally 1824 hours which is in accordance with the educational programme of the British Psychodrama Association BPA and with the FEPTO European standards.

The details of the educational programme are presented additionally in the terms of the exams of the first, second and third degree.

The basic data about the SPA trainers and the visiting trainers as well as about the members of the Examining Board are presented in the enclosed document-announcement of the SPA about the reception of the new generation of students.

The programme of the theory

Ljiljana Milivojević has already given fifteen sessions of the theory lasting 120 minutes respectively to the present generation of students about the basic elements of the psychodynamic therapy and group psychotherapy comprising topics about which the SPA students had previously received the literature:

1. the analytical situation
2. treatment alliance
3. the transference and the countertransference
4. resistance, negative therapeutic reaction
5. acting out
6. interpretations and other interventions
7. insights and working through
8. selection of the patients for the group psychotherapy
9. the beginning of a group
10. transparence and framework of the therapist
11. launching of the group and the therapeutic interventions
12. transference and countertransference in group psychotherapy
13. resistances and defenses in group psychotherapy
14. the homegeneity and the heterogeneity of the group psychotherapy members
15. the termination in group psychotherapy

Dušan Potkonjak teaches the theory about the basic elements of the psychodrama as well as the theory of the psychodrama through psychodrama action, in total 15 – 20 sessions lasting 120 minutes respectively. He also teaches the following topics: the short history of psychodrama and the contribution of J. L. Moreno; the application of psychodrama on the wide range of patients; the origins of psychodrama in the improvised theatre; the tele phenomenon as a reciprocal mutual empathy, the significance of the spontaneity and creativity; the sociometric process in group, the exploration of the object relations on the psychodrama scene; the action in psychodrama as a mediation of the communication between the concrete action and the abstract symbols; identification, counteridentification and catharsis in drama and in psychodrama; avoiding of acting out and achieving of acting in; the parts of the psychodrama session: warming up, action on the scene, sharing; the relationship among the protagonist, group director and the group, the sociometric choice of the protagonist, scene setting, the introduction of the significant persons in a drama, auxiliary ego, the following of the emotional energy, emotional smoke of the protagonist and group. The group director explores and tests the psychodynamic hypothesis on the psychodrama scene. Psychodrama as a rehearsal for life, seeking and making of new roles, the conflict of roles. Moving of the drama toward significant events and relationships in the past, action hunger of the protagonist and perhaps a catharsis. The end of the psychodrama action, closure, the possibility of action sharing. The subsequent analysis, processing of the previous psychodrama session. Scenes from the reality, scenes which did not happen in real life but the protagonist needed them to happen, surplus reality, mirroring, future projection, role reversal, the risk of caricaturing and stereotyping of the significant personality. Returning of one's own projections, the double technique, multiple doubles, protecting double, expressive double, the possibility of the interpretation through the double of the protagonist, the exploration of the possible transference using the director's double.

Jasna Veljkovic teaches 15 sessions of the psychodrama theory: Moreno's theory of roles, setting in psychodrama, spontaneity, creativity, catharsis, empathy, resistances and working through the resistances in psychodrama, the object relations in psychodrama, transference and countertransference in psychodrama, interpretations, interventions and confrontations in psychodrama. The personality development, the psychodynamic and psychodrama approach, working with the specific categories of patients. Dream exploration on the psychodrama scene.

Slavko Mackic and Aleksandra Novakovic will give another 5 sessions of theory.


June 2006
Dusan Potkonjak

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