An Invitation to an Encounter
"In our time a parallel development is happening through the psychodrama. In our times there are no living heroes with whom people can identify. Man is asked to turn upon himself. Man is directed to recognise the significance of the living encounter, at the time of the computer, the robot, the refrigerators, the automobiles and the airplanes, he is asked to relate hinself directly to the people he meets on the streets, in business and in his home, to recognise their immortal and inextinguishable value and not only as numbers in a game. And that is how encounter is defined in action terms. In such a fashion communication between two human beings is established on a depth level. There is no one and nothing that can teach you more about your neighbour than you can find out and experience yourself:
MOTTO
More important than science is its result,
One answer provokes a hundred questions.
More important than poetry is its result,
one poem invokes a hundred heroic acts.
More important than recognition is its result,
the result is pain and guilt.
More important than procreation is the child.
More important than evolution of creation is the
evolution of the creator.
In the place of the imperative steps the imperator.
In the place of the creative steps the creator.
A meeting of two: eye-to-eye, face-to-face.
And when you are near I will tear your eyes out
and place them instead of mine,
and you will tear my eyes out
and will place them instead of yours,
then I wiII look at you with your eyes
and you wiII look at me with mine.
Thus even the common thing serves the silence and
our meeting remains the chainless goal:
The undetermined place, at an undetermined time,
the undetermined word to the undetermined man."
Translated from “Einladung zu einer Begegnung”,
by J.L. Moreno, p.3, published in Vienna, 1914.
Reference: Psychodrama, First Volume, 1946
Beacon House, Inc.: Ambler, PA