The topic of the meeting was “How to play with children and youth with special needs“ and one workshop with three presentations and one lecture were presented during these three wonderful days in Brasov. Fifteen psychodramatists from 6 different countries who are working with children and youth have attended the meeting.

Beatrix Friedl and Mirela Danciu were beautiful hosts and took care of the wellbeing of the whole group. Thanks again for all your efforts!
After a warm welcome and a warm-up of the group Stefan Flegelskamp presented a lecture in action about the topic: “How he survived! Moreno’s special need to play God. Moreno’s childhood from a child psychodrama perspective.“

In this contribution, he explored the question of what it has meant for Moreno to watch the children play. His very intensive engagement with the role of God led to self-efficacy beliefs. Moreno’s early childhood was characterized by poverty, insecurity, and massive boundary violations. It is always difficult to study a historical person in a context detached from his time. In his autobiography, Moreno gave hints as to the roots of his need to play. We explored this information together and Moreno was our protagonist.

The workshop included 3 presentations related to the special needs of adopted/fostered children in psychodrama groups were as follows:

• „Come closer! Leave me alone! Come closer! Leave me alone!” Réka Balasy, Mária Orban, Csilla Peterffy and Enikő Szöke from the Children and Adolescent Psychodrama Association „Hanna Kende” (APCA-KH), Cluj, Romania. They presented how these children with attachment difficulties act and play in psychodrama groups. The clients were children from family-type homes for abandoned children and adopted children whose pre-adoption attachment problems did not evolve into the direction of secure attachment (because the adoptive parents do not have the proper emotional response skills). In many cases the school system did not help, but made it more difficult to take shape and to grow a good self-esteem and a secure attachment with caregivers/adopting parents. These children were not easy group-members: permanently test the limits, were very provoking, emotionally unstable, sometimes destructive etc. The colleagues shared vignettes of cases and invited the participants to play together and exchange experiences. The importance of secure relationships, reliability, rituals and playing freely were communicated.

In addition, we spent time in intervision, sharing experience and professional support.

Reflection of the meeting:
This network group was interested in theoretical and practical exchange under the aspects of the psychodrama schools of Hanna Kende and Alfons Aichinger. At the next meeting we will address psychodramatic work with families and consider the different methods and theoretical school backgrounds in the reflection.

In Brasov we established a research steering group. Milena Mutafchieva and colleagues will take care of the research regarding psychodrama with children and youth.

The next local host is Milena Mutafchieva and our network meeting will take place 31st Jan—2nd February 2025 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Save the date! Looking forward to meeting you in Sofia next year

Stefan Flegelskamp & Milena Mutafchieva

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