The two fundamental techniques that accompany psychodrama/role play are doubling and role reversal. Understanding how to use these techniques allows clinicians to incorporate them into one-to-one therapy, couples, family and group therapy.

In this module, participants will learn a basic history of how JL Moreno’s triadic system of psychodrama and sociometry developed and the role his wife Zerka Moreno played in its continued development. Participants will learn how to do an empty chair role play and how to incorporate “doubling” and “role reversal” into the Empty Chair technique or into any form of therapy.

Psychodrama is a full, complex form of therapy that requires much training. However, psychodrama’s basic techniques of doubling and role reversal can enrich and extend many forms of therapy. 

In role play we “talk to, not about.” A client can, for example, put a person or part of self into an empty chair and talk “to” them, then reverse roles and talk “as” them, back to themselves.

Doubling allows clients a short-cut way of “dropping down” into themselves and giving their inner world a voice; it offers a form of introspection that is direct and embodied. 

Role Reversal allows clients to experience both sides of a relational dynamic that they may be having an issue with, they can speak as themselves, then reverse roles and speak as the other person or “part” of themselves. Role reversal gives clients a visceral experience of standing in the shoes of the “other,” building empathy, insight, flexibility and strength. 

Both can be incorporated into most forms of therapy, transforming and enhancing the way your clients experience themselves and others. Through role-play, clients can talk to parts of themselves as well as attachment figures from the past or present. Through sociometrics they can experience and practice new relational behaviors in the here and now.