The Interpretative Potential of Psychodrama in Anthropological Research

Abstract

This article examines the interpretive potential and pertinence to anthropological research of dramatic re-enactments of certain, potentially revelatory cultural scripts, particularly myths and rituals, in a manner more commonly associated with a psychotherapeutic technique called ‘psychodrama.’ If it is true, as René Girard has claimed, that ‘globalization’ makes original ethnographic research in isolated human groups nearly impossible today, the creative application to existing anthropological materials of new interpretive procedures may open fresh perspectives. The so-called ‘psychodrama’ of Jakob Levi Moreno is perhaps more widely known as a psychotherapeutic technique, yet its use in anthropological research to yield socio-metric data has been recognized as well. Socio-metric procedures were used, for an example, by Claude Lévi-Strauss in working up statistical models of time- and space-perception. This article considers the use of ‘psychodrama’ in the interpretation, particularly, of cultural scripts like myths and rituals. While the author finds that such an approach lends itself to a Girardian theory of culture, the application of ‘psychodramatic’ techniques in the interpretation of myths and rituals will be complicated both by the hypothetical character of Girard’s theory and the inevitable interventions of individual human psyches.