I have enjoyed a reasonably long and happy association with educational and quasi-therapeutic drama techniques. Contexts have ranged from Rudolph Steiner's curative education for intellectually handicapped, through role-play exercises with Australian sociology postgraduates specializing in communications theory and practice, to spontaneity workshops for a Japanese university Shakespeare circle - with several other experiences in between. The application of intensive drama to language teaching is a possibility that has appealed to me, and I've given some classes based on the principle, but until now I've lacked the time and sufficient zeal to develop my ideas very far. Thus, reading Bernard Dufeu's book, Teaching Myself offered me an excellent and timely opportunity to consider the matter more deeply, if not from an armchair, then at least from a zabuton.
Bernard Dufeu is a teacher trainer and psychodramatist, and has taught French at the University of Mainz in Germany since 1966. He calls his method linguistic psychodramaturgy (LPD): the term marries linguistics to Jacob Levy Moreno's methods of psychodrama (Moreno 1970, 1987; cf. also Fox, 1987), in which the enactment of life situations related to psychological problems produces a therapeutic effect. The psychodrama patient becomes the protagonist in a group drama, with other participants assuming relevant roles. A traumatic situation can in this way be re-experienced and apprehended anew. Through a creative process of encounter with a troubling experience, the patient transforms, clarifies, and gains control over it.
The word 'psychodramaturgy' tends to soften the medical, therapeutic connotations of 'psychodrama,' and re-orientates us to something closer to a recognizable pedagogical framework. Dufeu borrows the term 'dramaturgy' from theatre practice, while stressing that he does not refer to "putting on a show" (p. 27), but instead intends to adapt to language learning "principles which make drama work and techniques derived from the stage, including actor-training" (ibid.). Dufeu appears influenced here by, among others, the Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal, whose 'theatre of the oppressed' uses actor-training and performance to free participants from politico-psychological and -social constraints upon their personal development and freedom (cf. Boal, 1979; 1992).
Here, we simply need to think of second language acquisition as a form of self-development to grasp the thematic continuity between language education and Moreno's psychodrama or Boal's dramaturgy. Indeed, recent thinkers such as Jacques Lacan have emphasized the primary importance of language in the very construction of the self, and Dufeu quotes Lacan's definition of the human as "the speaking being" (cf. Lacan, 1977) in support of LPD's holistic approach. Dufeu emphasizes that "talking implies more than using words within a structural framework; it encompasses habits of expression and relationship, interactive procedures, and types of social functioning which cannot be neglected or ignored when designing a language learning method" (p. 31). In line with this, he recognizes four functions of language - symbolic, expressive, communicative and structuring -, and maintains that an approach to the whole person should consider five types of involvement - physical, affective, intellectual, social and spiritual. In short, learning a foreign language is not an intellectual process alone, but an emotional and spiritual one as well, requiring of us new ways of perceiving the world, ourselves and others.
The activities Dufeu proposes are, I believe, very strong stimuli for the imagination and highly conducive to development of rapport, trust and communication. For example (p. 103) : "Participants stand facing each other and rub their hands together to increase their sensitivity. A raises his or her hands to shoulder height and B does the same, so that the palms of their hands are now opposite each other. A slowly makes a series of movements with the hands and B shadows the same movements as in a mirror image. Then B makes a series of hand movements for A to copy. Sounds can be added to the exercise, which are echoed by the person acting as mirror." The power of this kind of exercise can only be understood by taking part; indeed, to naive observers the exercises generally may look childish, but the point is that drama is integrally related to children's play. It is perhaps because of their proximity to forms of experience relatively unmediated by conditioned, "adult" ritual - the gruelling, ongoing, everyday assertion of the mundane that we all know only too well - that such exercises can so effectively stimulate the emotions and imagination, and heighten interpersonal and self awareness.
Dufeu arranges the activities fairly convincingly into a coherent programme and suggests how an environment can be created in which participants 'encounter' the foreign language, ideally as much at an unconscious level as at a cognitive one. The role of the teacher is to act as an 'animator,' this role being derived from that of the 'double' in psychodrama who attempts to express what the protagonist is, for one reason or another, unable to. In LPD, this task becomes a linguistic, and at the same time esoteric one ("symbolically, the animator transmits the soul of the foreign language to the participants" (p. 98)). LPD classes use no text because Defeu considers that a text "comes between the students and the language" (p. 37). Rather, the programme guides students through a series of strictly dramatic activities calculated to stimulate the imagination and the unconscious - through work with masks (including blind masks) and puppets, relaxation and poetry, myth, children's games and fairy-tales.
The dramatic encounter with the foreign language in the creative environment of LPD itself determines what the student needs to express, and hence the content of the language learned. Since a significant dimension of this encounter involves the protagonist's own self-discovery, Dufeu believes that the language thus learned is extraordinarily authentic, a true self-expression: " .... it is the language of the inner being and its relationship to the outside world, the language of sensations, feelings, emotions, the expression of needs and desires, observations, intentions, inter-personal relations, etc. - a relational language, which brings together the real and the imaginary, and on to which a functional language can be grafted according to need" (p. 40).
One minor criticism here would be that Dufeu's almost throwaway "grafting" of functional language onto students' primal acquisition of the L2 treats too blithely some difficult questions about the relations - or lack of them - between his concerns and methods and those of mainstream language teachers, learners and institutions. Having said this, I believe that Dufeu admirably achieves the aim of the OUP New Perspectives series, which is "to look both outside the perimeter of the profession for information and inspiration, and inside the teacher as a person, to search for ways of releasing creative energy and ideas" (cover). Received wisdom would seem to dictate that the subjectivity of the teacher is a value to be subtracted from the equation, that language teachers are technicians involved in the imparting of an objectively determined corpus of language. In contrast, Dufeu stresses the need for teachers as well as learners to undergo continuous personal evolution, through development of self awareness and expression. "Why," he asks, "encourage learners to become autonomous in the foreign language if we ourselves have not reached autonomy in our own ability to express ourselves?" (p. 173). Throughout the book, Dufeu places great importance on the personal and interpersonal aspects of language teaching, and emphasizes that a high degree of involvement between teacher and student subjectivities is essential.
I am all for Dufeu's conception of language as a "dialogue between inner worlds" (p.171). For all the authoritative theorizing one comes across, I cannot help but have the feeling that, in the end, there is something mysterious and incomprehensible about language acquisition. Though I'm not quite so devoted to the esoteric as Dufeu, I'll certainly make use of some of his very good exercises the next opportunity I have.
References
Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the Oppressed. Trans. by McBride C.A. and McBride M.L. London: Pluto Press.
Boal, A. (1992). Games for Actors and Non-actors. Trans. by Jackson, A. London: Routledge.
Fox, J. (Ed.). (1987). The Essential Moreno: Writings on Psychodrama, Group Method, and Spontaneity. New York: Springer.
Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits. Trans. by Sheridan, A. New York: Norton.
Moreno, J.L. (1953). Who Shall Survive? Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and Sociodrama. New York: Beacon House.
Moreno, J.L. (1977). Psychodrama. New York: Beacon House.
Originally published in Learning Learning 2/2 (July, 1995), 15-17. 
Michael Guest, 1995
Michael Guest, Faculty of Information, Shizuoka University, 836 Oya, Shizuoka 422; fax: 054-237-0212; tel: 054-238-4964; email: guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
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