Dramatic Psychotherapy

Dramatic Psychotherapy

An Interview with Dr. Yehuda Bergman

Where What When – January 2010

Everyone has problems in life. That’s the challenge – but also the opportunity for growth. That growth happens mostly when we have the right tools. Sometimes we even see the solution; it is getting from “here” to “there” that is murky. Often, personal change is needed. And personal change is a very hard river to cross.

That’s what therapy is for, of course. Yet talk therapy, while important, might not be enough. Emotional engagement, creative self-expression, and practice are all aspects of what it takes to really effect change. We have only to look at children’s natural dramatic play to see how they instinctively use all of these modes to learn, grow, and process issues.

Dr. Yehuda Bergman, who arrived in Baltimore with his family from Eretz Yisrael last summer, graduated from the Expressive Therapies program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For over 20 years, Dr. Bergman has used psychodrama and drama therapy to help people grow, change, and fulfill their dreams. A visitor to Dr. Bergman’s spacious new office here in Baltimore would see many “different” objects in his psychotherapy room. Aside from the usual office scenery, there are comfortable chairs, colorful fabrics, costumes, hats, puppets, crayons, drawing paper, and musical instruments. He smiles as he explains: “I am an expressive arts therapist, specializing in psychodrama and drama therapy. I incorporate and utilize the potential of the arts and natural human creativity to explore issues and facilitate the change that the client wants or needs to accomplish in order to improve the quality of his or her life.”

Do people’s lives really change as a result of being engaged in therapy? “Of course,” says Dr. Bergman, and tells this story: “One evening I received a phone call from a worried father asking me to see his son as soon as possible. When I inquired about the urgency, he replied that his son refused to attend the yeshiva and spent all his time in bed. The father felt that the boy was on his way to leaving home and going off the derech.

The following day Yossi,* a 20-year-old young man, showed up in my office. He seemed very confused, anxious, and angry. From his appearance, I could tell that he was standing at a crossroads, not knowing which direction to take. He was wearing black pants and jacket over a trendy sweater. He had used lots of gel to straighten his hair and disguise his peyos.

After checking me out for few seconds, he said, “I know my father spoke to you, and I want you to know that there is no way I am going back to the yeshiva. I hate everything having to do with being religious, so don’t even try to convince me otherwise.”

After we got to know each other a little and he started to feel more comfortable in the room, he described an image of the crossroads where he stood. It was a dark and foggy place, and he could not find the path through it.

 I suggested that he create that image of the crossroads right in the room, and place his inner characters in it. Yossi used some fabric and chairs to create the image. I asked him to split his confusion into different characters and to give them names, so he did. He created each inner role to express the feelings he was so familiar with. There was the rebellious, anti-religious character. In that role, Yossi was able to express his frustration and anger at his teachers who never answered his deep questions and at his father who didn’t let him ask questions, etc. Then he got to the character of the free secular person, who could do whatever he wanted. In that role, Yossi was able to express his fantasies and his dreams, mainly for materialistic fortune. And then he got to the role of the chareidi man. Through him, Yossi brought his questions regarding G-d, existence, and the confusion he felt about these crucial questions.

For several sessions, Yossi had conversations with these characters. During that period, I also met with his parents, whose biggest concern was that he not abandon their way of life, which for them was symbolized by his black jacket. But Yossi did discard his black jacket, and along with it, all other religious symbols and practices. He left home and looked for a job. His parents were dismayed. But from getting to know Yossi, I realized that he had to distance himself in order to be able to come back.

After a few months in therapy, Yossi was able to choose a road. He met Esther, a 19-year-old secretary who came from a chareidi family and was also looking for her way. He brought her to my office as soon as they decided to get married. I worked with them before and after their wedding, which I happily attended. The young couple decided to work together on building their relationship with Hashem and to learn what it means to be an observant Jew. Yossi’s life has changed. He was not what he was before he came to therapy. He decided to take responsibility and to explore his own and his new family’s true path to Hashem.

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Psychodrama has been around for a long time and is a very popular therapeutic method in Israel, where it is used in schools and other institutions. But many people are not familiar with what it is or what it does. The participants in psychodrama explore inner conflicts by acting out their emotions and interpersonal interactions on stage, with the guidance of the therapist “director.”

Dr. Bergman uses psychodrama in his work with individuals and couples here in Baltimore, and, in addition, is forming two psychodrama groups, one for men and one for women. He plans to offer two free introductory sessions, where people can meet him and experience psychodrama method, with no obligation to commit to the full series of sessions.

People often ask, what if the client is not talented in acting? “Psychodrama does not require any acting experience or talent,” says Dr. Bergman. “Each of us is born with natural dramatic ability, which helps us process situations we face as children. My role is to awaken those abilities and to utilize them for the benefit of the client. When dealing with a personal issue on the psychodramatic ‘stage,’ the client looks at the issue from a distance; that wider angle enables him or her to get to the core of the issue and find a spontaneous solution.”

*  *  *

Yaakov,* a participant in one of Dr. Bergman’s groups for men was frustrated at the way the principal of the school where he taught treated him; he had lots of anger inside. Dr. Bergman had Yaakov create scenes he had experienced at work and cast the other group members as his coworkers. By having to “teach” the group members the roles they were to play, Yaakov had to get into those roles himself. This broadened his understanding of the other people and added to the repertoire of responses he was able to summon up in real-life situations.

Yaakov was able to express his anger and frustration using the psychodramatic technique of the “double.” The double is another person – the therapist or another group member – who acts as an extension of the “protagonist” (the client who presents his/her story). An effective double can express, verbally or through action, what the protagonist might wish to, or need to, express but is presently unable to do so.

As the sessions progressed, Yaakov felt that he needed to leave his school but could not find the necessary energy and emotional resources. He compared the situation of having to confront the principal to walking on a rickety bridge. Dr. Bergman asked him to build that bridge, so Yaakov lined up some desks. He chose one member of the group to be the principal, whom he placed at the end of the bridge. Along both sides of the bridge, he positioned other members of the group, whom he cast as people in his life who had been encouraging to him since his childhood. Their role was to encourage him while he climbed and crossed the symbolic bridge. As he got to the other side, he expressed his anger and frustration to the principal. He managed to tell him that he did not want to work with him anymore or feel victimized by him. He then presented his resignation letter.

The following week, Yaakov informed the group that he had actually spoken with the principal. He left the school and had already found a new and much better place to work.

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Much of Dr. Bergman’s work in psychodrama and drama therapy has been with children, using the methods to confront issues arising from ADHD, anxieties, anger management, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some of his most effective work has been in treating victims of abuse (as well as the offenders).

A 10-year-old religious boy was referred to him by an organization. Avraham* had been abused and was experiencing rage and inability to function in school. He suffered from anxiety attacks, and had lost trust in adults, rabbis, his parents, and G-d.

“After a few sessions, during which I managed to build a trustful relationship, I used the “empty chair” technique. I asked him to imagine that his abuser was sitting there in the room. As his “double,” I helped him express his feelings, his hurt, anger, betrayal, rage, and confusion. It took him few sessions to be able to express his feelings in full, but he got to the point where he actually screamed and hit the “empty chair.” I wanted him to let out his suppressed feelings in the protected therapeutic environment, as a step to gaining back his sense of self-control.

“As our meetings went on, Avraham slowly started to regain his ability to trust adults, and to accept that his parents had been unable to protect him or deal with his feelings. But he was still traumatized from the events themselves, so I suggested that he process his traumatic experience through a creative project. He decided to write a story. He used metaphors in his story to describe what had happened to him and how he was feeling and his inability to speak about it or call for help. He referred to his negative feelings as a “monster” that was threatening his existence and that he really wanted to get rid of.

“As the project progressed, he started to feel much better about himself. He was functioning in school, and his overall performance improved. He wanted to publish the story, so that every child would be able to read it and become aware that something like that might happen, how to prevent it, and how they should react.”

“Creating something beautiful or meaningful from the broken pieces of one’s life experiences is often beneficial to the healing process and change,” says Dr. Bergman. “Unfortunately there is no way to ‘turn the wheel back,’ to change the fact that there was a traumatic event. What one needs to do is to change the direction of the feelings from an inner distraction and preoccupation with the self to expressing the painful feelings in a more useful and creative form.”

A 15-year-old teenager was referred to Dr. Bergman by his family a month after his mother passed away. Moishi* could not function in his daily life; he didn’t speak or express any feelings and was wandering the streets all day long or playing computer games. “When he got to my clinic, he didn’t make any eye contact,” says Dr. Bergman. “There was no way to communicate with him. I realized at certain point that he was tapping nervously on the arm of his chair, I got the big African drum I have in the room and started to join him tapping on the drum. We started to create a musical conversation.

“After few sessions in which we communicated only by using the drum, he brought his own drum from home. Then I started to sing, and suddenly he joined me singing. I learned that he had an excellent singing voice and sense of rhythm. He wanted to sing with me a song that he heard on the day his mother died. We sang it together. I accompanied our singing on the guitar, and he was playing the drum. 

“I proposed creating an original song. He said he couldn’t write music and lyrics, so I said, ‘Let’s write it together;’ and he agreed. I suggested that the song be about his memories of his mother. He started to tell me all about her, he expressed his longing for her, his memories, and the pain he felt. He wanted all of it to be in the song.

“When the song was finished, he wanted to create a rap song, where he was able to express his thoughts and the feelings of loneliness. Once, as he was singing the rap song, he added a line from a familiar song that talks about a celebration that ends but that tomorrow there would be another day to wake up to and start all over again. “At this point, I felt that this young man was in a completely different state, and the positive reports about his overall functioning confirmed my assessment.

“We went to a professional recording studio to record the songs. The set up of the music was beautifully done, and Moishi’s singing was at its peak. As he presented his new CD to family members, they were very emotional and praised him for that amazingly beautiful project. He felt proud and shared with me that this was the first time he had ever created and completed something in his life.”

Part of Dr. Bergman’s success as an expressive therapist is the variety of artistic abilities he possesses, as well as the knowledge, experience, and sensitivity to know when and how to intervene. 

*  *  *

Dr. Bergman’s career spans a variety of locales and professional settings. In the United States of the late Eighties, he worked with troubled adolescents, from whom he learned to respond creatively and fast. Later on, in Israel, he worked with children in the school system, and established therapeutic facilities around the country. He also worked with soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He supervised students and professional therapists, and established the first group in Israel for “playback theater,” a form of improvisational theatre in which someone from the audience tells stories from his or her life and watches them enacted on the spot by an ensemble of actors. At present, in addition to his private and group therapy, Dr. Bergman is starting rehearsals for a one-man show he is planning to perform around the U.S. The show will combine singing and telling more stories from the therapy room.

After becoming a baal teshuva, Dr. Bergman worked with many adults and yeshiva bachurim in the religious community on issues they faced, including personal, philosophical, family, and identity issues, as well as dealing with the complicated issues of abuse. He also initiated and headed of the Expressive Therapy post-graduate training program at Michlala College in Bayit Vegan, the first program of its kind aimed at producing religious professionals in Israel. “All these experiences really made a tremendous impact on me as a therapist, and sharpened my professional knowledge and abilities. But I think that one of the most important factors in therapy should be the ability to enable the client to regain hope and to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Dr. Bergman.

He tells the story of Miri,* a young married woman in one of the groups he conducted for frum women. She was married over 10 years but didn’t have any children. In one of the sessions, she volunteered to present her “social atom” to the group. A social atom consists of all the meaningful relationships in one’s life, past and present. As she proceeded to place group members in the roles of significant people in her life, she included among them her unborn children.

“The group was in a complete shock, and tears started to fill the room. She expressed her devastation, anger, and lack of hope. Following a conversation she had with the unborn children, I asked her to visualize what she really wanted and to create it there in the room with the help of the other group members. She created the Shabbos table in her house, with her husband and four children sitting around the table, singing Shabbos songs as she watched them from the side. I asked her to cherish that memory deep inside her, to let that emotional picture penetrate and to open up the well of hope.

“In the following weeks, Miri took the stage few more times to deal with other issues: conflicts with her parents and other family members and their expectations from her. By the end of the year, she gave birth to a baby boy. Her face was glowing as she carried her newborn son to his brit.”

While it may sound like therapy can perform miracles, Dr. Bergman is not ready to call it that. “I think it is a combination of professionalism, sensitivity, experience, technique, along with the readiness of the client for change,” he says, “and, of course, lots of siyata deshamaya (G-d’s help).”

Dr. Bergman is a member of YAHT, the Israeli Organization of Expressive Arts Therapy, and Nefesh, the International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals. He is certified by the Israeli Ministry of Health. To contact him, please call 443-739-1599.

*name and details have been changed to protect privacy.