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Action and interaction, and emotion and thought as the inner wellsprings of action, play a central role in the lives of individuals, families, and society, spanning the continuum between everyday life and disorder. Until now, the narrative tradition has been the main methodology for portraying and formulating human action and interaction, and little has been written about the dramatic approach to life, disorder, and therapy. Since the essence of drama is action, dialogue, character, and emotion, it is time to give drama its due. The author proposes a methodological concept — dramatology — analogous to narratology, to highlight the dramatic method of investigating action and interaction in life, disorder, and therapy. Breuer and Freud presented both aspects of dramatology: dramatization in dream and fantasy, and dramatization in act, focusing on the person. This approach was elaborated by psychoanalysts with an interpersonal orientation, focusing on the person and speech as action. Dramatology is applied to exploring ongoing patient-therapist interactions as reality and as transference. Analyzing unconscious and latent dramatization in dream, fantasy, and enactment with free association is enhanced by utilizing clarification and confrontation, focusing on the manifest and mutually observable expressive form and style of actions and enactments, defenses and resistances, and the discharge and meaning of emotions. Dramatology puts forward a new paradigm for psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.
(Received 12 February 2009; accepted 8 June 2009)