Moreno’s Scientific Methodology
The chief methodological task of sociometry has been the revision of the experimental method so that it can be applied effectively to social phenomena.
(Moreno, 2012:39)
Abstract
This article is an exposition and exploration of the scientific methodology developed by Jacob Levy Moreno. It is based on a careful reading of his writing on the subject. His methods affirm and incorporate human spontaneity in social investigation. His scientific methodology is part of the broader field of sociometry. Six principles of experimental design and scientific method are identified and listed. Research, when these principles are observed, in Moreno’s words is: by the people, of the people and for the people. The author’s reflections and comments are incorporated in the exploration.
Key Words
Jacob Levy Moreno, social science, scientific methodology, principles of sociometry, research, psychodrama, experimental design, psychosocial, sociometry.
Introduction
Early in my reading of Jacob Levy MorenoIwas inspired to discoverthathe devisedan approach tosocialsciencethatis both true to the psychological depths and to the empirical demands of science. I understood that scientific innovation is a driving force in his work. He saw his methodology as a new approach to social science. Moreno devised ways to ethically and accurately investigate human beings, creatures capable of being spontaneous. He found a way to overcome the difficulty for science that humans are forever capable of freely being new.He saw his methodology as a new approach that enabled a true social science, in his words, a method of the people, by the people and for the people.
Investigation, assessment and experimentation are well integrated into Moreno’swell-knownmethods: role training, spontaneitytraining, sociodrama and psychodrama (I will use the word psychodrama to cover them all from here on). However hismethodologyof socialscience, his way of doing research is not so widely understood or implemented. The science he proposed is overshadowed by the therapy methods he devised. This is true generally and it was for me in my training.I read abouthis hopes for a new science but they were not so relevant tome or to many others as we focussed on sorting out our lives.
Research in psychological methodshas become more important and even mandatory. The aim of this paper is to understand Moreno’s contribution and vision, so we can evaluate its place psychodrama methods and more broadly in our time.
First I will show that show thatMoreno was consciously and strongly motivated as a scientist. Secondly, by way of warm upI offer an imaginary dialoguewith Martin Buber will highlight the distinctive quality of sociometry and Moreno’s motivation. I will continue to reference some of Moreno’s main writing on the experimental method. I have identified six principles that sum up his social science methodology, and they are pointers to how the method works in practice. I invite the reader to reflect Moreno’s scienceand its impact on the work we dowith people and groups.
Science and therapy
Moreno used the term ‘sociometry’ for his scientific experimental methodology. Ann Hale usefully describes three uses of the term sociometry: “sociometry as a philosophy, sociometry as action …, and sociometry as a research tool.” (2006).This essay has its focus on the third aspect, as research.
Research and therapy have a different purpose. Moreno used the same term ‘sociometry’ for investigation and intervention for change. This makes sense, as the very act of investigation of human relationships will change the relationships. However the distinction between practice and research is useful. Practice (for example therapy) and research (for example evaluating interventions with patients) may use similar methods however the approaches have a different purpose and begin with a different warm up.
Sociometry as a science exposes hidden social dimensions. The vulnerability of deep encounters, intimacy and engagement are a central part of therapy, not usually associated with science. Traditionally research processesdo not directly assist and change the lives of the people who are researched. Sociometric research is motivated by those researched, and can have beneficial outcomes for them.Such research is understandably difficult to distinguish from therapy, yet it is different. Making a contribution to human knowledge is to the fore in science, not specific social or psychological changes.
Moreno, scientist
Jonathan D.Moreno,in the autobiography of his father that he edited,introduces Jacob Levy Moreno as "a religious prophet or a wizard or a guru ... he was all of these and a scientist."(Moreno, 2011). Scientificmotivation and innovation is there at the beginning of his work.
Moreno is explicit about his theology and science, he writes in a preface to Theatre of Spontaneity, first published in 1923 how that book “marked in my work the beginning of a new period: the transition from religious to scientific writing.” (Moreno 2010:17)
Moreno’s delight in the power of the stage as a research tool is evident when he writes of this early discovery:
The theatre was a safe retreat for unsuspected revolution and offered unlimited possibilities for spontaneity research on the experimental level. Spontaneity could be tested and measured …
Moreno 2012:17
An amazing insight: theatre as a laboratory, indicatingthat social science has early origins.I have been in dramas where we enacted war and fought for peace and in those microcosms we explored what was possible. While, the focus for these sessions was largely personal, I am inspired now to think how, with anadditionalwarm up, they couldproduce social research outcomes, recorded to assist people wanting to create a better life for themselves and their communities. While there is much of Moreno’s workthat has been kidnapped, borrowed and duplicated, the idea that the stage is a tool for research on the experimental level remains at the heart of his work.
The essence of sociometry as a scientific methodology (as distinct from organizational development or therapy) is summed up succinctly in Who Shall Survive?This one quote is a key to understanding the whole book:
What, precisely, is sociometry?... It is the sociometric revision of the scientific method of the social sciences that will gradually make such a thing as a science of society possible. It gives its subjects research status by changing them from subjects into participating and evaluating actors; a social science becomes sociometric to the degree in which it gives the members of the group research status and the degree in which it is able to measure their activities; it goes to work with actual or prospective groups and develops procedures which can be used in actual situations. It puts an equally strong emphasis upon group dynamics and group action as upon measurement and evaluation.
Moreno 1978:18
His seminal work,Who Shall Survive?is primarily Moreno’s proposal for a new methodology for social science. The titles of some of his writing indicate his focus on science. TheJournal he founded is: Sociometry: A Journal of Inter-Personal Relations and Experimental Design.[1]His book, Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society.An Approach to a New Political Orientation.(Moreno, 1951), is a treatise on method.It is a book written to establish a new way of doing social science.
A third form of science
Moreno thoughtscientific methods devised for the physical sciences were not applicable to humans. Alongside the observational sciences and the physical sciences, sociometry is the third form of science;a science of humankind. (Moreno, 1978:358-359). A bold claim!
The experimental method in the social sciences was handicapped as long as it tried to follow the physical model; it really got under way in the first half of the twentieth century under the leadership of sociometry…
Moreno, 1951:13
Moreno acknowledged his scientific methodology for people was incomplete, and a “worldwide project – a scheme well nigh Utopian in concept” (1978:121).
People are not objects
Moreno had an idea of the uniquenature of human beings because of their autonomy and the power to create and destroy.(Moreno, 2013:22). This was an observation of the way people are and how they are different from machines. People have consciousness.This is a profound fact; I am I, I can act, I can relate. Valuing these qualitiesin a person is something he shared withMartin Buber.
Moreno and Buber were contemporaries.[2]Both men value encounter. Both understand the ability to form an I-Thourelationship as a distinctly human quality. Sandra Turner describes the similarity in their views of the encounter. (1990).Science belongs to theI-It world according to Buber. He writes of the I-Thourelationship:
The world that appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it appears always new to you, and you cannot take it by its word. It lacks density, for everything in it permeates everything else. It lacks duration, for it comes even when not called and vanishes even when you cling to it. It cannot be surveyed: if you try to make it surveyable, you lose it.
Buber, 1972:83
Moreno while having a similar understanding of the I-Thourelationship, believes investigation is possible without destroying the I-Thou-ness. We don't know if they ever discussed these things, however I imagine a conversation about their difference Moreno might have had withBuber that would stimulate his resolve and focus his work, I can hear them talking:
Buber: As soon as you can measure it, you have not seen it in its fullness. Connect with people and you are in a sacred space, this disappears if you step out to observe it.
Moreno: I'm withyou whenyou say to connect with a person you need to meet, to encounter the person. That is different from the world of things. But, Martin, we can measure therelationshipwith people AND remainin theI-Thou world. We can create encounters make the experience of measuringthe relationships part of the encounter.
Buber: Youcan't convince methat it can be done. Once you are an observer, the encounter is over. Thou becomes an It, an object.
Moreno: It can be done, butwith great difficulty. The worldis not ready for encounters that are conscious, observed and measured. A deepwarm up is required for this venture. Observation would not be at a distance but right there in the relationship. A method will need to be created, a method for investigating the I-Thou, a sociometry. Using the physical and biological sciences with people, you and Iagree, would not be in the sacred realm of authentic meeting.
Buber: True encounter is hard enough and rare enough now. People are new in every moment.
Moreno: I agree. It will be a science of the here and now. Peoplewill participate in its creation, they are creators likegodand they can consciously create something new. When people warm up together, to understand something, to create something, in spontaneity they will investigate and transform themselves at the same time.
I'm going to make this happen, it is the only way we shall survive.
Buber: But is it ethical to have an agenda like this for other people?
Moreno:The new science will include participants’true motivations, what moves people to action. If spontaneitycan be maintained it will be a democratic science, and ethical in its foundations. (1978:xci)
Sixprinciples of sociometryas a research methodology
Moreno went on to develop a method of social science that embraced the spontaneous and creative nature of people.“Sociometric procedure is not a rigid set of rules, it has to be modified and adapted to any group situation as it arises.” (Moreno 2012:27).The researcher needs to be spontaneous and work with what emerges as the research proceeds. Throughout Moreno’swork there are however rules he described and principles he proposed.From his writingI have identified six principles that show how the method works; these guide practice and can be used to inform social research.
The principles are interrelated. The list is followed by more details abouteach principle.
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Six Principles of Moreno’s Research Methodology
1. Principle of warm up.
The researcher and the participantsbecome informed, ready, willing and able to participate in a research project.
2. Principle of action in thehere and now.
Participation is done in action, in the moment. Learning is experiential.
3. Principle of co-action
Participants in the group become researchers, and the researcherbecomes a participant.
4. Principle of dynamic difference
Group process attends to the discrepancy between the overt and the underlying motivations.
5. Principle of adequate motivation to create change
Participants should feel thatthe experiment is in their own cause.
6. Principle of collaborative recording and publishing
Recording and publishing is designed and integrated into the project by those involved.
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1. Principle of warm up.
What determines the extentto which a group is an experimental research project? The main factor is thewarm up. The researcher and the participants consciously embrace a research project by coming together for that purpose.
Moreno has a requirement for sociometry: “that the participants in the situation are drawn to one another by one or more criteria.” (Moreno 1978:91) If the warm up includes investigation, experimentation and research then participants will embrace that purpose.Warm up is always towards action and production.(Moreno 1978:9)
Example: A few years ago in Christchurch a group of psychodrama practitioners met with the aim of trying out different ways of naming roles, and seeing what was the most useful to their practice.
2. Principle of action in the here and now
Zerka Moreno said in her session at the Oxford international conference in 1994, "Dr Moreno created psychodrama because language is not the high road to the psyche but movement is. From the earliest moments our actions communicate throughout a non-verbal period of life. Action is prior to language." (Holmes, 1994:78)
Moreno has “Rule of universal participation in action.”(1978:63).Research fails to meet this criteria, for example, when people are asked to report on their introspectionin surveys, rather than explore together in a group and concretise their experience in action. People develop and change as they work together.
Research when in action in the here and now enables spontaneity “Spontaneity operates in the present, now and here…” (Moreno 1978:42).
Example: Writers have identified various types of doubling. In a training group these categories are explored in action. Trainees report on the usefulness of the categorisations.
3. Principle of co-action
Gene Eliasoph, one of first psychodrama practitioners tells how in 1954 he heard Moreno say: “We are all patients in this group, and we are therapists as well for one another. I will learn from you and you will learn from me, and who knows, we may be the first group to fly to the moon!"(Nicholas & Eliasoph,2002). Though Moreno was speaking of therapy here, the same principleof co-action applies to research methodology:
The actor must become an observer of himself and an actor towards the observer. And the observer must become an actor towards the observed and an observer of himself; one must co-act with the other, a meeting is taking place. … The methodological problem … is to bring the act into the observer and the observer into the act.
Moreno:1954:358-359
“The safest way to be in the warming up process yourself is to become a member of the group.” (Moreno 1978:62)
In this setting the researcher becomes a participant and the participants become researchers.There is mutuality. This is an encounter and role-reversal. Each becomes the other“…each is carrying on his ‘own experiment’.”(Moreno, 1978:62) “…a social science becomes sociometric to the degree in which it gives the members of the group research status.” (Moreno 1978:18) Moreno speaks of being in two groups at once, one personal the other a group of researchers. (1978:62-63). He is talking about there being two aspects to the group. One analogy is a psychodrama training group, where the training purpose, i.e.learning the method is held stronglyas people do personal work.
Example:A group of trainers plan to meet to explore the best way to workwithrelationshipsusing the psychodramatic method and to develop the curriculum. The group devises the way they will proceed as part of the group process, including experiments with their own partners.
4. Principle of dynamic difference
Societies and groups have an actual dynamic central structure underlying and penetrating the formal structure. The exploration of the structure formed by the hidden motivations and unrevealed attractions and repulsions in the group reveals the factors of spontaneity, tele, social atoms and coteries that exist in the group (Moreno 1946:540). Focus on depth is attained as people attend to what emerges in them in response to each other.Moreno speaks of "the slow dialectic process of the sociometric experiment." (1978:63)
The validity of research depends on the actual dynamics being revealed, on authentic relationships. This means that in any sociometric research group there is likely to be a lot of personal discovery and relationship building.Itis likely the group experience has a therapeutic value for the participants. Allsociometric research groupsare likely to have therapeutic outcomes.By contrast not all therapy groups have a research or experimental design to the fore.
Example: In an organisation a group of executives have the task of planning for the retirement of the CEO. The task becomes easier once it becomes public knowledge in the group that there is a long-standing conflict in the organisation between two key members.
5. Principle of adequate motivation to create change
The first two sentences of Who Shall Survive?elucidate the connection between knowledge, unity and change:
A truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective than the whole of mankind. But no adequate therapy can be prescribed as long as mankind is not a unity in some fashion and as long as its organization remains unknown.
Moreno 1978:3
For Moreno the purpose of knowing is to make changes.
In order to give every member adequate motivation to participate spontaneously, every participant should feel about the experiment that “it is his own cause, and not for the one who promotes the idea—the tester, the employer, or any other power agent.” … This should not be an experiment of nature without the conscious participation of the actors,but one consciously and systematically created and projected by the total group.
Moreno 1978:62-63
‘Modern research’[3]can be motivated by the researchers’ desire to be ‘evidence based’ to secure recognition and funding by the state and insurance companies. Moreno uses strong words when describing the neglect ofthe motivations of the people to be studied.The task of sociometry is “to correct the most flagrant error of methodical insight which has made social research trivial and confusing while deteriorating its outlook.” (Moreno 2012:38-39)