Dramatology vs. narratology: A new synthesis for psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and interpersonal drama therapy (IDT)

The author proposes a new word and concept, dramatology, to emphasize that lived life is primarily a drama, a communication to self and others, in action, intention, emotion, and spoken word. In lived encounters and events persons as agents primarily dramatize their emotions and experiences and secondarily narrativize these into first person or third person stories or narratives. In real life interactions, and those in the special interpersonal situation of psychotherapy, it is the dramatic form that holds center stage and narrating becomes part of the dramatic action. Interpersonal drama therapy (IDT) focuses on the immediacy of the personal and interpersonal conducts as experienced and expressed in mutually evocative communications, both conscious and unconscious, between patient and therapist. A central technique of IDT, confrontation, is correlated with free association and transference interpretation, with a view to revealing the meaning of the conscious (manifest) and unconscious (latent) content and intent of the patient's and therapists communications in the process of psychotherapy.