WORDS OF THE DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR

By Regina Moreno

The long-awaited memoir of Regina Moreno, the daughter of J.L. Moreno and Florence Bridge Moreno, brings new information about the founder of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy as well as an inside view of the everyday life of this extraordinary family.
The title, “Words of the Daughter: A Memoir,” is a gentle play on the title of her father’s early book which he called “Words of the Father,” taken from his scribbling on the walls of his room as a young man, claiming to channel the words of God.
Regina’s memoir begins with her birth in 1939 at the prestigious Doctors Hospital in New York City, when her father was already beginning to make a name for himself as the founder of the new Beacon Hill Sanitarium in Beacon, N.Y., which housed an unusual theater where patients enacted their problems using the psychodramatic method that Moreno developed.
Through the chapters, Regina continues to reveal details about everyday life in the Moreno household and her childhood struggle, sometimes with fear and loneliness, as she navigated a world where her father’s work dominated family life and the mental patients at her father’s sanitarium became her friends and playmates.
She tells us about her mother Florence’s haunting loss of her own mother who died in the 1919 flu pandemic – and Florence’s emotional struggles after Moreno started his extramarital relationship with Zerka. She introduces us to her beloved paternal grandmother Pauline Levy – who she called “Omama” – who told her family stories as a little girl. We also meet her Uncle William Moreno, her Aunt Anne and their son, her cousin Joseph, all important figures in her childhood social atom.
Most importantly, Florence is revealed as a woman of accomplishment, present during the early days of Moreno’s work in the United States, particularly at the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, where Florence worked as a student counselor. Florence made significant contributions both in the integration of developmental issues in human development and in sociometric development and quietly used psychodrama and sociometry in her long-time career as a public school teacher and musician.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716254598

Book preview

This book is a rare account of what it’s like to be part of the Moreno dynasty as a daughter. I thoroughly recommend it as a unique story, an account of personal relationships and to those interested in the fascinating Moreno legacy.

Marcia Karp, TEP

Internationally acclaimed trainer, London, England

Growing up in a mental hospital with our eccentric and brilliant father meant that my sister Regina and I led exotic lives. I celebrate this memoir, where she gives voice to her stories and our special relationship.

Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D.

Author of "Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of

Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network"

Like a well-directed drama, scene after scene unfolds of the author's life as the child of J.L. Moreno, the father of psychodrama. I couldn't put down this intriguing memoir which covers her relationship with her charismatic father, her sad and lonely mother Florence and her beloved stepmother Zerka. Anyone interested in the history of psychodrama will find this story compelling.

Rebecca Walters, MS, TEP

Hudson Valley (N.Y.) Psychodrama Institute

Regina Moreno provides a deep insight into the inner workings of the life and family of renowned psychiatrist J.L. Moreno. Her memoir covers the interpersonal dynamics of the family life of this renowned psychiatrist, Moreno's second wife Florence, who is Regina’s mother, and Zerka Moreno who later married her father and became Regina's stepmother.  This insight into the personal life of the Moreno family is profound and important in understanding the full story of the founder of psychodrama.

Edward Schreiber, TEP

Editor of To Dream Again and Autobiography of a Genius

Regina Moreno has given us a sweet and tender memoir of life inside the Moreno family and has restored her mother, Florence, to her rightful role in the history of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy.

Dale Richard Buchanan, Ph.D., TEP

Retired Director, Clinical Therapies

at Saint Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C.

Regina Moreno’s memoir is a must-read for any true student of psychodrama. It presents a kaleidoscope of memories, of the life and legacy of her father J.L. Moreno, her mother Florence and stepmother and psychodrama’s later emissary Zerka, through the tender and terrified eyes of a devoted daughter. J.L.’s charisma reveals itself through both the deep and binding love that she felt for her father and the inspiration and fidelity evidenced by all three women who carried forward the methods he created. The revealing insight into both the development of the method and the mind and heart of the creator, fills in a picture that every student longs to have more clearly drawn; who is this man whose mind I follow and revere? But it is the last chapter, the surplus reality resolution of her struggles for a coherent and comprehensible self that moves me most, Regina’s question to her mother. Why did she see a black spot on my neck that was never there? Here the daughter’s brilliant mind (the apple never does fall far from the tree) speaks to all of us who have had or done the same thing, who have grown up inside or passed along a projection so powerful, that it sees only itself. Here Gina has opened a window that we all long to peer through, the strange and circuitous path of intergenerational pain and healing.

Tian Dayton Ph.D., TEP

Author of The Living Stage

WORDS OF THE DAUGHTER:

A MEMOIR

By REGINA MORENO

2021

Edited by Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

Regina Moreno

Words of the Daughter: A Memoir

ISBN 978-1-716-25459-8

Copyright © 2021 by Regina Moreno

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book includes excerpts and adaptions from:

Moreno, Regina (2014) Who Will Be There to Catch Me. Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie. 13. 11-13. 10.1007/s11620-014-0240-2.

Moreno, Regina (2017) Growing Up with Zerka. The Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Group Psychotherapy: Spring 2017, Vol. 65, No.1a, pp. 12-19.

To my ancestors who came before, my children Miriam and Benjamin,

and those who have come after, as well as my dear husband János Kirz.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP … 8

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS … 10

Chapter 1 – Act 1, Scene 1 … 13

Chapter 2 – The Words of the Father … 18

Chapter 3 – My Mother’s Story … 25

Chapter 4 – The Little House … 29

Chapter 5 – The Big House of Secrets … 34

Chapter 6 – Seven Crazy Scenes … 41

Chapter 7 – The Breakup and the Breakdown … 46

Chapter 8 – In Exile in Queens … 52

Chapter 9 – The Gilette House … 60

Chapter 10 – Back to Beacon … 64

Chapter 11 – Gretel and Regina … 69

Chapter 12 – Still the Only Daughter … 74

Chapter 13 – Finding My Place … 76

Chapter 14 – The Trip to Europe … 80

Chapter 15 – New Life for My Mother … 89

Chapter 16 – The Rest of the Story … 92

Chapter 17 – Who Will Be There to Catch Me? … 96

Chapter 18 – Zerka … 99

Chapter 19 – My Mother Lived in Her Piano … 104

FOREWORD

By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP

I have never met Dr. J.L. Moreno, the European-born physician who is widely celebrated as the man who revolutionized psychiatric treatment. A pioneer in improvisational theater and a social scientist fascinated with relationships in all kinds of groups, he prodded us to accept a new and vigorous way to relate to our world with the method of dramatic play that he would call psychodrama.

However, I have had the great good fortune to study closely for several years with Zerka T. Moreno, Dr. Moreno’s third wife, who is credited as the co-developer of psychodrama. She is known not only for shaping psychodrama while J.L. was alive but also for continuing to refine and polish this method after his death in 1974 through her teaching, writing and traveling.

And I have had the lovely opportunity to befriend Dr. Moreno’s daughter, Regina Moreno, who has asked me to assist with the writing of her memoirs, where she lovingly reveals more about the father of this method, the important contributions of her stepmother Zerka to this blended family away from the psychodrama stage, and especially her mother Florence’s hidden role in developing distinct psychodramatic and sociometric innovations of her own.

In the library of psychodrama, the name of Florence Bridge Moreno is usually relegated to a footnote, if she is mentioned at all. In this memoir, Florence is revealed as a woman of accomplishment, a woman who was present during the very early days of Moreno’s work in the United States, particularly at the venerable New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, where Dr. Moreno conducted his early experiments in social relationships, and who quietly developed and contributed to research and innovations in both psychodrama and its related sister method of sociometry.

Jim Enneis, one of the first-generation psychodrama trainers who trained at the Moreno Institute, long maintained that Florence made significant contributions both in the integration of developmental issues in human development and in sociometric development.  Among these developments: how we progress from spatial distance – for instance, nursery school children to adolescents — and cleavages based on characteristics to tele.  Many believe that she designed and implemented and created the early sociogram charts, and she is known to have corresponded with psychodrama practitioners, particularly Rosa Cukier, the Brazilian psychodramatist who translated her letters into Portuguese and published them in an article in the Brazilian Psychodrama Journal in 1996.

The scholars among us will want to investigate Florence’s actual writings, research and commentary published in the 1940s, starting in 1945 when she co-authored an article with her then-husband on Role Tests and Role Diagrams of Children: a Psychodramatic Approach to an Anthropological Problem in the Moreno-published edition of Group Psychotherapy: A Symposium.

In J.L.’s Psychodrama: Volume I, published in 1946, Florence is credited as author of a significant and lengthy chapter titled Spontaneity Theory of Child Development, which includes sections on spontaneity training of children, Spontaneity School, and psychodrama in education. Further articles followed for the remainder of the decade – psychodrama in the neighborhood, sociodrama in the sociology classroom, and the learning process in nurses' training.

After Florence’s divorce from Dr. Moreno, we do not have documentation of her work in any professional journals. Instead, she built upon her psychodramatic and sociometric knowledge to pioneer the teaching of sociometry and role playing with her pupils and their parents in a public school setting in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of New York City and devised a structure to enact Bible stories with her congregation that certainly appear as a forerunner of  Bibliodrama as invented by Peter Ptizele.

However, this memoir is not a scholarly work, nor must it be. Regina shares details about everyday life in her household and her childhood struggle, sometimes with fear and loneliness, as she navigates a world where her father’s work dominated family life and the mental patients at her father’s sanitarium became her friends and playmates. She introduces us to her beloved paternal grandmother Pauline Levy and her dear Uncle William and Aunt Anne and their son, her cousin Joseph, all important figures in her childhood social atom, as Dr. Moreno called this diagram of personal social connections.

These private family moments help us understand how thoroughly performance, psychodrama and the creative arts wound their way into the lives of each member of the Moreno family. And in these everyday life stories, Regina also allows something else to be revealed – we learn about her father’s struggles with his Jewish identity in the face of widespread anti-Semitism, prompting him to leave his beloved Vienna, then changing his surname to the less-Jewish Moreno and later lavishly celebrating Christmas while bypassing the traditional Jewish holidays. When Regina, as a young adult, began studies to covert to Judaism, she met her father’s strong objections.

It seems that he wanted to rise above his Jewishness, just as he did not want to be labeled only as a psychiatrist.

And behind J.L’s outsized personality with all its drama, we can guess at his personal struggles as a young immigrant, where a new culture and a new language tested his brilliant ideas and his ability to fit in, and we can wonder how and if he addressed his many losses associated with moving from country to country  and culture to culture while working with the human struggles of others.

It has been a pleasure to support the writing of this memoir. But now, let us hear Regina’s words.

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Memories are like sealed boxes. When you open the boxes, the forgotten contents start flying out.

In this memoir, I have worked to give meaning and shape to the many stories that I have carried with me for decades.

It has not always been easy to be the child of J.L. Moreno, the man who I adored who was also so fully consumed with his work, and his second wife Florence Bridge Moreno, a beautiful and talented woman  who carried deep pain that both confused me and angered me.

Writing this memoir has been a difficult journey in some ways, and in other ways it’s been a restorative journey.

I have written from a great many resources, including memories, my many journals, letters, reviews of precious photos and home and commercial videos, and yearbooks, articles and documents that I have saved through the years as well as many conversations with others, both family and friends.

Although I have attempted to reconstruct conversations and the sequence of events from several decades ago – many of which have embedded so deeply within me – I cannot guarantee that every one of my memories are portrayed exactly as they happened. Some of my memories