Many people – with ideas, work, support – have contributed to the foundation of this first psychotherapy training center in Bulgaria. A great place among them has Prof. David Kipper, with whom I shared this my dream – to train psychodramatists in Bulgaria, and he supported, developed and guided me both conceptually and pragmatically.
Another contributing to the construction of the Psychodrama Center Orfeus is Daniela Kerina. She was not only my co-leader in the first psychodrama groups directed by Bulgarians! With her we created the programs, the rules, the norms. We read, discussed, wrote, traveled and directed together. We used every guest trainer to supervise us – David Kipper, Bernhard Achterberg, Sue Daniel. But most of the time we were both alone and relied on each other.
Prof. David Kipper – Ph.D., TEP, clinical psychologist, direct student of J. L. Moreno, researcher, lecturer at Roosevelt University of Chicago, is the author of many publications and scientific research on psychodrama. A longtime publisher of the journal “Group psychotherapy, psychodrama and sociodrama”. He is the author of the book “Clinical role-playing games” and in his Bulgarian edition he has included a new chapter, creating on his experience in Orpheus. Adam Blatner called him “the most scientific psychodramaist”. David Kipper is the person who gave the psychodrama method an academic. He dared to measure spontaneity by creating the SAI-R instrument to measure the effectiveness of psychodrama. I met him for the first time at the IAGP Congress in Montreal in 1992, at his “Magic Shop” workshop. Then, in response to my timid invitation he to come to Bulgaria to share with us his knowledge and experience, but for which we can not adequately pay him, he told me: “Bulgarian people have made for the Jews something that no other nation has done. Now I want to do something for the Bulgarians.”
Thank you David!
He conducted the founding five-days training seminar for Psychodrama Center Orpheus in October 1993 and delivered the lecture “Actions Speak More Than the Words” to the crowded audience of the Psychiatric Clinic at the Medical Academy in Sofia. In the following years Prof. Kipper directed 6 cross-seminars and 6 open lectures in Orpheus. His last lecture in the same yet more crowded audience was on January 5, 2007: “Can Spontaneity be Measured? Some Empirical Data”
Galabina Tarashoeva, MD, PhD
At the end of her medical training, Dr. Tarashoeva has been actively involved in the introduction of group psychotherapy in Bulgaria in her “underground period” as a leader of some of the first psychotherapeutic groups and a participant in the Friday meetings of the leaders – “Fridays”, 10 years before the “gentle revolution” in 1989. After hеr meeting with the Psychodrama at the IAGP Congress in Zagreb in 1986, for three years, she exchanged letters with Zerka Moreno in search of a way of learning in this method. Galabina Tarashoeva opened Bulgaria’s door for the psychodrama in 1988 by inviting Professor Rene Marino (biographer of JL Moreno) and Dr. Göran Högberg to a conference of psychotherapists from socialist countries in Sofia. They directed the first workshops on the psychodrama in Bulgaria. This made it possible in the spring of 1989, before the fall of the iron curtain, Dr. Tarashoeva to organize the first psychodrama training and training group, with a comprehensive program directed by D-r. Göran Högberg and Gabrielle Wisman Brunn. Trained and supervised by Zerka Moreno, twice on the Stage from Beacon, placed in Highland, and once at Holwell Center, she worked in a team with direct students of Jacob Levi Moreno as Prof. David Kipper, Monica Zuretti, Marcia Carp, as well with and Sue Daniel, Bernhard Achterberg and many others. She is certified as a Psychodrama therapist from the Stockholm Psychodrama Academy and Psychodrama Institute for Europe. In 1993, with the active support of Prof. David Kipper of Roosevelt, the University of Chicago, she founded and is leading the first Bulgarian psychotherapy institution – Psychodrama Center Orpheus.Dr. Tarashoeva is a co-founder of the Psychodrama Institute for Europe (PIfE)in 1989, and later of the Federation of European Psychodrama Training Organizations (FEPTO)in 1996. She is actively involved in the annual meetings of this Federation as well as with its structures – the Standards Committee, the Research Committee, the Task Force for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
She is a co-founder and the first president of the Bulgarian Society for Psychodrama and Group Therapy, co-founder and former vice president of Bulgarian Association of Psychotherapy, and an active participant in the activities and various structures of these organizations. She has worked actively throughout the years in the Bulgarian Medical Association, Sofia College of Physicians, Bulgarian Psychiatric Association, Sofia Psychiatric Society She is currently a third mandate a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy (IAGP) and she has actively contributed to the creating of a new, more democratic bylaws. Actively participates in national and international professional organizations, conferences and congresses, workshops, seminars and projects.She helps to enrich the experience, knowledge and skills of Bulgarian psychodramatists by organizing a series of seminars with guest lecturers, some of the most leading figures in the psychodrama world. Since 2012 she has organized the first training in psychodrama for children with Dr. Fabian Blobel from Germany, and in 2016 – the first training program for the application of psychodrama and active methods in work adolescents. Dr. Tarashoeva conducts the first clinical scientific research on efficacy in the field of psychotherapy – Effectiveness of Psychodrama in the therapy of Anxiety Disorders, using the spontaneity test SAI-R, and dedicating the results to the memory of Prof. David Kipper.
Daniela Kerina – psychologist, psychodramatist, student of Bernhard Achterberg, co-leader and co-author of Orpheus’s training program. In the summer of 1998, Daniela Kerrina went to specialize in the United States and since then she has been working there.