Boys to men and back again

The transition from boyhood to manhood is one of the major steps in life as a male. How this step takes place has a significant effect on our communities, our organisations, our society. Every boy has to negotiate his own sense of power and what it means, his playfulness, his authority, his sensitivity, his physicality, his relationships with women, with other men and so on. Every man has to keep learning what it is about boyhood that is important: both to nourish in himself and in others. And every community must grapple with how to encourage their boys without oppressing them with expectations.

In our ‘community’ of interested men and women, what are the social forces that shape how men understand their roles in life? What assists us to do this well and how can we harness them? What are the forces that get in the way and how do we manage them?

Invented by Dr JL Moreno, the founder of psychodrama, sociodrama is a group method for exploring social issues that concern us. Not everything can be addressed through individual therapy. Where psychodrama deals with the individual, sociodrama focuses on the social world. It is a community exploration that will examine where we have got to and the next steps in creating more workable social systems.

Bio

I’m a Sociodramatist and staff member of the Psychodrama Institute NSW, teaching the use of action methods in groups and in one to one situations.

For the past 15 years I have applied Morenian methods in my work in organisations and in schools: running seminars, coaching and facilitating learning. My main love is in using action methods to bring human spontaneity back into stuck systems.