Is psychodrama a cathartic therapy?
While catharsis has been associated with psychodrama, there are many aspects of this method that are not particularly concerned with catharsis per se. The processes of warming up and behavioral practice often have little to do with catharsis, except in a broader sense of there being a minor, not-particularly-emotional sense of “aha” or “whew” that goes with the integration of any learning experience. This corrects a talk by Prochaska in which he assigned psychodrama to the action phase of therapy, but not to the pre-contemplation, contemplation, or, following the action phase, homework phase. In fact, psychodramatic methods can be helpful and adapted to all phases of the work.
