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, ÒWords of the Daughter: A Memoir,Ó is a gentle play on the title of her fatherÕs early book which he called ÒWords of the Father,Ó taken from his scribbling on the walls of his room as a young man, claiming to channel the words of God.
ReginaÕs 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 fatherÕs work dominated family life and the mental patients at her fatherÕs sanitarium became her friends and playmates.
She tells us about her mother FlorenceÕs haunting loss of her own mother who died in the 1919 flu pandemic Ð and FlorenceÕs emotional struggles after Moreno started his extramarital relationship with Zerka. She introduces us to her beloved paternal grandmother Pauline Levy Ð who she called ÒOmamaÓ Ð 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 MorenoÕs 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.