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About the Founders

The foundation of the Psychodrama Academy was founded in 1987 by Göran Högberg, Monica Westberg and Ingrid Göransson with the aim of promoting development, education and research on psychodrama, sociodrama and sociometry. The foundation is a member of the Fepto - Federation of European Psychodrama Training Organizations.

Ingrid Göransson och Monica Westberg
Göran Hagberg

The work at the Psychodrama Academy has been run through collaboration. Foundation founders have had a shared leadership which has required a common value base. Despite our completely different backgrounds, we succeeded in developing a respect and exploitation of each other's diversity so it became an asset to the work. Göran Högberg, psychiatrist specialist in children and adolescents, as a physical psychotherapist, was constantly looking for what could bring something good to the healing process in people's trauma. Göran was the driving engine at the start of the training. In the first large group he stood for the theoretical responsibility. The group had over 40 participants and was divided into several subgroups. Göran has been in the training for the specialist competence Body and Psychodrama.   Monica Westberg, educator and social entrepreneur with a focus on pedagogy, children's knowledge and gender roles. After completing his own psychodrama education, Monica began working full time with the methods. In addition to the work at the Psychodrama Academy, Monica started the Norwegian Psychodrama School together with Eva Röine. An activity that grew at record speed and later was transformed into the Norwegian Psychodrama Institute.   Ingrid Göransson, specialist in working life psychology and clinical psychologist, also a socioom with many years of experience from work both in the municipal / state sector and the corporate world. During her time as a psychologist at the National Board of Health, she had responsibility for further training of healthcare staff and the introduction of democracy at the state's various healthcare facilities. When she later worked in the municipal family care, she gained insight into the conditions that apply to the social security officers in the municipality and became her field of research where the social workers' working environment was in focus. Ingrid had, when we started the education, just completed her research at the Department of Education. She was responsible for continuous mapping of the educational process and each seminar was evaluated by the students.   During the years that the foundation has worked, six undergraduate courses have been completed every 500 hours of instruction, of which the two have been carried out in cooperation with the Ersta-Sköndal College, and four further courses of each 720 hours in the methods. In 1994-1997, the Foundation received grants from the SIDA to develop psychodramatic education in Bulgaria, Russia and Lithuania. It was Göran Högberg who ran and was responsible for this business. The foundation also supported a major subject dissertation at the Department of Drama, Film and Theater at the University of Trondheim, which Børge Kristoffersen presented in 1993 with the title Focus on Sociology.

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