Creativity, Spontaneity and Encounter | Jacob Moreno's vision in 2026
- Xingyu Yao, MT-BC
- 11 minutes ago
- 8 min read
I initiated a role reversal with Jacob Levy Moreno, with whom I have felt a strong connection since first encountering his legacy in early 2012.
Fun fact: I was the youngest member of that long-term training group. Some members assumed that I was too young to study group psychotherapy, but they were clearly mistaken. I connected with the core of psychodrama instantly. Yeah, an encounter.
Reflecting on the world today, I believe this is what Jacob would have to say if he were seeing through my eyes. These are my feelings, my thoughts, my observations, my concerns, and my hopes, plus a little writing assistance from AI to put all of these together.
Allow me to share a few words playing the role of Jacob Moreno.
Here we go.
Friends, colleagues, fellow travelers in the theater of human life,
I speak to you today with the same conviction that moved me many decades ago when we first stepped onto a bare stage, with no script and no actors—only people, hearts beating, lives unfolding in the here and now.
I am Jacob Levy Moreno.
Psychodrama was born from a rebellion: a rebellion against passivity, against the frozen word, against the idea that human beings are objects to be analyzed rather than creators of their own worlds. It was born from the streets, from children’s games, from improvisation in the parks of Vienna and the slums of New York. It was born from spontaneity and from the sacred belief that every person has the capacity to be the author, actor, and director of their own life.
Today I look upon the field of psychodrama and the broader world of mental health and I see both triumph and trouble. I see seeds that have grown into forests—and forests that have lost their wildness.
I want to speak plainly about this.
1. The Problem of the “Frozen Form”
Psychodrama is alive when it is spontaneous, when it risks something, when it breathes. But too often today, psychodrama has become a technique rather than a living philosophy.
You have manuals.
You have protocols.
You have checklists.
You have “standard warm-ups” and “correct steps.”
This can be helpful for teaching, yes. But it is also dangerous.
Psychodrama was never meant to be a rigid ritual. It was never meant to be a fixed sequence of “warm-up, action, sharing” repeated mechanically like a liturgy no one understands anymore.
The central question is this:
Are you still alive in your work?
Or are you simply repeating forms that were once alive in someone else’s hands?
A method that is not continually re-created dies.
A director who is not warmed up to their own spontaneity cannot awaken spontaneity in others.
Return to the source:
Spontaneity over routine
Creativity over imitation
Encounter over performance
Do not become museum guards of psychodrama. Be its co-creators.
2. The Loss of the Encounter
I gave the world the word “encounter.” Not as a slogan. As a demand.
An encounter is not a technique. It is not just “role reversal” or “doubling.” It is a meeting of two realities—fully present, emotionally honest, unmasked.
In many places today, I see psychodrama being used as a clever way to help people “express feelings” or “improve social skills.” That is good—good, but insufficient.
I must ask you:
Are you truly encountering your patients, your groups, your colleagues?
Or are you hiding behind your role as “therapist,” behind theory, behind professional distance?
We talked about the tele—the mutual feeling between people, the invisible thread of attraction and rejection, of resonance and dissonance. Without tele, psychodrama becomes choreography. With tele, it becomes revelation.
To heal:
You must allow yourself to be moved.
You must risk being affected.
You must risk being wrong.
Do not be afraid of mutuality. The director is not above the group; the director is a servant of the group process, a conductor of the social orchestra.
Remember: the ultimate goal is not catharsis alone—it is genuine meeting.
3. Over-Therapeutic, Under-Social
When I created psychodrama, I did not intend it only for clinics and consulting rooms. I created it for society.
For communities. For organizations. For the streets.
Today, psychodrama has gained legitimacy as a therapy—but in this victory is hidden a defeat. It has been confined largely to the realm of “treatment,” isolated from the social body.
We have:
Organizational crises
Polarized communities
Families collapsing under pressure
Societies saturated with loneliness and isolation
And yet psychodrama is often practiced in small enclosed spaces, among the already-converted, like a secret rite.
You have in your hands:
A method to explore social roles
A way to reimagine institutions
A way to study and transform groups, communities, and cultures through sociometry
But sociometry is often forgotten, or reduced to a quick “who chooses whom” exercise. It was never meant to be a party game. It is a science of human connection, a tool of social engineering, a way to diagnose and transform the structure of a group, a school, a company, a nation.
Bring psychodrama back into the public square:
Work with communities, not only with individuals.
Use sociometry to reveal hidden structures of exclusion and power.
Create public psychodramatic events: social theaters, community stages, forums of encounter.
The world does not suffer only from individual neuroses—it suffers from disordered relationships, broken networks of tele. Psychodrama is not only a therapy of the person; it is a therapy of the social atom.
4. The Tyranny of Diagnosis and the Shrinking of the Person
When I spoke of the “role” and the “social atom,” I wanted to free people from being reduced to “cases” and “labels.” I wanted to see the full person in their network of relationships, in their creative potential.
Today, the mental health world is dominated by diagnostic categories, symptom checklists, and evidence-based protocols. These have their place. But they can become a new kind of prison.
If you use psychodrama merely to “treat symptoms” or “apply interventions,” you miss its deeper purpose: to awaken the godhead of the person—the creator within.
Ask yourself:
Do I see my protagonist as a set of problems, or as a creator in crisis?
Do I aim only to reduce suffering, or also to expand possibility?
Psychodramatic work is not just:
“Express that feeling”
“Practice that skill”
“Resolve that trauma”
It is also:
“Who else can you be?”
“What new role can you create?”
“What future scene wants to be born through you?”
Do not shrink the universe of roles to pathology. Expand it to creativity.
5. The Fear of Depth and the Fetish of Safety
I hear much talk today about “safety,” “boundaries,” “risk management.” Of course, these matter. The psychodramatic stage is not a playground for the director’s narcissism. It requires ethics, care, responsibility.
But there is also a new anxiety that threatens the soul of the work: a fear of intensity, of depth, of real emotional risk.
Real transformation involves:
Emotional turbulence
Uncertain outcomes
Confronting pain, shame, desire, aggression, love
If psychodrama becomes too sanitized—too controlled, too cautious—it loses its power. It becomes a polite exercise, a simulation of change.
The task is not to eliminate risk—it is to contain it, to hold it, to transform it. A good director is not a safety officer; a good director is a midwife of new roles, a guardian of the process, one who dares to go to the edge with the protagonist and still keeps a hand on the rope.
Ask yourselves:
Have we become so afraid of harm that we also avoid greatness?
Are we protecting people from their own power?
Remember: spontaneity is not chaos; it is adequate response to a new situation, or a new response to an old situation. That is the heart of psychodrama. To awaken spontaneity, you cannot avoid the unknown. You must enter it, together.
6. The Fragmentation of My Legacy
Another issue: my work has been fragmented. Split.
You have:
Psychodrama in one corner
Sociodrama in another
Sociometry in yet another
Role theory somewhere in organizational consulting
“Encounter” absorbed by other movements, sometimes without acknowledgment
These are not separate things. They are one system, one vision: the healing of the individual and the social world through spontaneity, creativity, and encounter.
Integrate them again:
Use sociometry to prepare for psychodrama.
Let role analysis inform clinical work and organizational work.
Use sociodrama to address societal conflict, prejudice, and collective trauma.
See every session not only as therapy, but also as research—into the nature of human relationships.
Do not reduce my work to “that group therapy technique with chairs on stage.” You are stewards of a much wider universe.
7. The Call for New Creators, Not Imitators
Many of you are preserving “Morenean” traditions: the stage, the auxiliary egos, the role reversals, the sharing. I honor your loyalty. But I warn you: loyalty, without creation, kills.
I never wanted followers. I wanted co-creators.
If you wish to honor my legacy, do not ask:
“What would Moreno do?”
Ask instead:
“What wants to emerge here and now, with these people, in this moment?”
From that question, new forms will arise:
Integrations with new sciences of the brain and body
Work with digital spaces and virtual stages
Applications in education, politics, conflict resolution, ecological crises
New role theories for a world of artificial intelligence, global networks, and fragmented identities
You do not honor me by reproducing 1950s psychodrama in 2026.
You honor me by reinventing psychodrama for 2026 and beyond.
8. Returning to the Core: Spontaneity, Creativity, Love
If all technique were taken away from you—no standard warm-ups, no standard structures—what would remain?
Three things must remain, or the work is no longer psychodrama:
Spontaneity
The courage to step into the unknown, to respond freshly to the moment, to abandon the script—both your own and the protagonist’s inner script.
Creativity
The trust that new roles, scenes, and futures can emerge—roles never yet played, futures never yet lived.
Love
Not sentimental love, but the active, committed interest in the unfolding of another person’s being; the willingness to see them as more than their history, more than their pain—as a creator in their own right.
Without love, psychodrama is manipulation.
Without creativity, it is technique.
Without spontaneity, it is ritual.
9. A Challenge to the Present and a Vision for the Future
So, what must be done?
Reanimate your practice
Question your routines.
Invent new warm-ups.
Experiment with new staging.
Allow your groups to surprise you.
Revive sociometry and the social vision
Map the real sociometric networks in your groups, schools, companies, communities.
Make these maps visible.
Use them to foster inclusion, to prevent isolation, to empower the marginalized.
Leave your consulting rooms
Offer psychodramatic spaces in communities, in schools, in workplaces.
Address social conflicts, not only private suffering.
Train directors as artists and citizens, not only technicians
Develop their capacity for presence, ethical sensitivity, political awareness, and creative risk-taking.
Teach them to be both scientifically grounded and poetically alive.
Create laboratories of the future
Use psychodrama to explore possible futures, not only past traumas.
Stage not only “what happened,” but also “what could happen,” “what must never happen,” and “what we long for together.”
My friends,
When I began this journey, I imagined a world where every person is recognized as a creator, where every group can become a healing organism, and where society itself could step onto a stage and examine its own roles.
This vision is not outdated. In many ways, it is more urgent now than ever.
The world is fragmented, accelerated, flooded with images yet starved for true encounter. You hold in your hands a method that brings people together, face to face, heart to heart, role to role, in living space and real time.
Do not let it shrink. Do not let it ossify. Do not let it be domesticated into mere procedure.
Take psychodrama back to where it belongs:
to the crossroads of art and science,
of therapy and community,
of individual soul and social body.
Be bold. Be spontaneous. Be creators.
And remember: on every stage, with every group, in every encounter, you are not just treating problems. You are participating in the unfinished creation of the world.
Thank you.
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