Within the FEPTO community the work with children and adolescents is very little developed. Within the last 10 years a few people, namely Hilde Gött, Stefan Flegelskamp, me and some others are trying to gather and connect professionals working with children and adolescents within the FEPTO to share our work and approaches and give children psychodrama a “home”. Even thought there are people working with children within Europe and the FEPTO, there are just a very few approaches conceptualized and even less developed as a formation structure to teach psychodrama for children. The FEPTO untill now has not worked on the formation of Psychodrama for children. But now within the newly founded network group for psychodrama with children and adolescents one of our aims is to create a minimal standart for the formation.
Single articles and very few books about psychodrama with children are published in different national psychodrama publications within many European countries as Italy, Spain, France, etc.
Out of the French speaking area first publishing of case studies and psychodrama approaches with children/adolescents were from Anzieu and Widlöcher in the 60s and 70s.
The Adlerian psychodrama with children in Hungary was implemented by Hanna Kende also since some decades publishing two books. This is a standartised training, but so far I don’t know the regulations and structure of this formation. Surely was she manly influenced by the French Adlerian approach but as she had contact to Alfons Aichinger maybe also little of the German approach is found in her training.
In the German speaking countries the oldest and most known concept was developed by the Germans Alfons Aichinger and Walter Holl, having done their Psychodrama formation for adults and trying to use this method with children. As it was not working they developed their way of therapeutic group play on symbol level, which they were teaching for the last almost 40 years in the Moreno Institute Stuttgart. They published 3 books and many articles about it.
In the early years of their formation they had a Swiss, Eugen Hodapp, and an Austrian trainee, Hildegard Pruckner, who brought the formation in their countries. Eugen in Switzerland is teaching almost since 30 years the method of Aichinger/Holl. Being equivalent to the formation in Germany, this formation is a complete formation for children psychodrama, consisting of 15 weekends of 20 hours of formation (Introduction weekend, 12 weekends within an ongoing formation group and two extra seminars focused on parents and adolescents, plus literature studies and a presentation). In the last 7 years he is teaching this formation in the IPSR (Istitute for Psychodrama, Sociometry and Roleplay). Today it is the only Institute in Switzerland giving formation in children psychodrama. In Germany Aichinger is still giving that formation in Moreno Institue Stuttgart and Szene Institute Köln, so far elsewhere no other formations for children Psychodrama in Germany are available. In Austria the formation is organized via ÖAGG (Austrian Organisation for Group Therapy, Section Psychodrama).
Hildegard Pruckner did some changes to the Aichinger/ Holl approach and introduced her type also some 30 years ago in Austria, publishing some books and many articles. Unlike Germany and Switzerland, in Austria the Psychodrama is recognized as a therapeutic method within the humanistic therapies, the value and distribution of the psychodrama in Austria is very high and structured to the criteria of the psychotherapy formation guidelines. So that the psychodrama therapist is a recognized formation on university level and the Director for children psychodrama therapy is an additional formation to be absolved after achieving the Psychodrama therapist. Because of that there is a big network of professionals with a lot of publishing and even some research activities.
As in Germany and in Switzerland Psychodrama is not recognized as psychotherapy, the approach to children is open for all professionals working therapeutically or pedagogically with children in groups. As mentioned before, it is a certified complete formation in psychodrama for children which for most of the participants is enough as they are mostly interseted in the approach and not in the whole psychodrama psychotherapy formation.
Only to become a director psychodrama psychotherapist for children there is a curriculum including an ongoing self reflection group, working in the field with supervision and a master thesis equal like for the other Psychodrama psychotherapist formations.
I did my formation with Alfons Aichinger and Walter Holl in 2008 in Moreno Institute Stuttgart.
I did Co-therapist in the formation group of Eugen Hodapp and Helena Brem in 2013 in IPSR.
Now I do one formation group together with Eugen Hodapp in IPSR, being a recognized trainer for psychodrama with children and adolescents by IPSR.
I am co-founder of the international conferences on psychodrama with children and adolescents of the German speaking countries (2012 Austria/ 2014 Germany/ 2016 Switzerland).
So far I didn’t fullfill all requirements to receive the psychodrama psychotherapist for children, so I am officially a psychodrama practioner recognized by the Istitute überlingen- Edenkoben.
2016
Dr. med. Fabian Blobel