Visting Sweden

by Annie Currie

During 1999 I spent some time in the village of Linton on the north coast of Devon. I had ventured there to spend a couple of weeks training with Marcia Karp in her beautifully appointed hillside residence overlooking the Bristol Channel.

During those weeks I was particularly drawn to two Swedish women, Birgitta Lindholm, a family therapist and Cecilia Berge a psychodramatist. We greatly enjoyed each others company during workshop times and in between.

Over the intervening years, I keep contact with them and was invited by them last year to visit Sweden and do a little work whilst I was there.

I spent most of my time in the charming city of Stockholm. A series of small islands with wonderful architecture, intercepted by busy seaways. The Swedes have a strong societal infrastructure, high taxes, excellent education and social welfare and a healthy lifestyle.
They continue to enjoy high rankings among OECD countries in health and wellbeing statistics and they are proud of that.

During my time I ran a one day workshop with Birgitta's colleagues in a group practice she had just joined. The purpose was to enable the group strengthen their team, and to get to know each other in some new ways. Psychodrama was new for all of them apart from Birgitta and they responded with curiosity and easy involvement. Their understanding of English was certainly sufficient for most interactions and the day flowed well.

Orebro and Cecelia Berge

A highlight of my trip was visiting Cecilia in her home and workshop space in the city of Orebro, two hours south west of Stockholm. She runs a 5 day training workshop at the end of the term just prior to the long summer holidays which all Swedes anticipate eagerly after the long dark winter. Her invitation was for me to run the last two of those days with the generous allowance to do whatever I wanted!

Her purpose build workshop space at the back of her family home was well equipped with sounds system, piano, exercise balls, cushions fabrics, yoga mats etc an flowed out into a garden. It was beautifully appointed and a great space to work in .
The group of 8 trainees was enthusiastic and keen to learn something of New Zealand and psychodrama in our part of the world. Cecilia remained with the group and between participants they could assist each other when there was an interpretation challenge.

We began each morning with an optional half hour qi gong session which most of the participants attended. This was a nice centering beginning to the day.
The dramas that unfolded revealed a lot of family history and culture that was an opportunity for me to understand more of these Nordic people and the variety in their heritages coming from the far north which is a challenging environment with long dark winters and summers where the sun is reluctant to go to bed.
I loved this opportunity to work with them