Regina Sewell, LMHC, TEP
PhD Sociology
Magic Shop is one of psychodrama’s classic techniques and remains a favorite in the repertoire of many psychodramatists. In Magic Shop, the director invites group members to step into surplus reality and engage their spontaneity and creativity in order to explore making life changes that will allow them to move closer to their dreams and goals. It is especially effective with groups that have reached the integrative or culminating stage of development, when participants are ready to reflect on their growth and consider how they will carry their learning forward. J. L. Moreno demonstrated the power of the Magic Shop in Psychodrama, Volume I (1964), where he describes its use in a therapeutic session.
Part of Magic Shop’s popularity is due to the fact that it offers several important benefits for groups. First, nearly every participant is invited to engage in meaningful personal work by exploring qualities they think they need. Another benefit of Magic Shop is that it helps group members integrate what they have learned in the group and find ways they can incorporate what they learned outside the group. A third benefit of Magic Shop is that encourages honest self-reflection, helping participants recognize both their strengths and areas for continued growth. As a result, Magic Shop provides a powerful and memorable bridge between the group experience and each participant’s ongoing personal development (Barbour, 1992).
Magic Shop is also adaptable in a wide range of group settings because it combines creativity and playfulness with remarkable versatility. It can be used with groups that are organized around a central, common theme (for example a grief group or a group for people who just got divorced) as well as with groups made up of people dealing with a variety of needs and goals. It can be used as a warm-up to a drama, be a complete dramatic enactment with one protagonist, or lead to a series of rich vignettes with a number of protagonists. It can be used in the working stages of a group or can be used closure activity to help group members identify their gains and achievements as a result of participating in the group.
Because of its straightforward structure and adaptability, Magic Shop is a great technique for both novice and experienced psychodrama directors. The key to running a successful Magic Shop group lies in the director’s warm-up spontaneity and creativity as well as following the basic guidelines for the bartering process discussed below.
As part of your warm-up to direct Magic Shop, it’s helpful to decide what role you want to take as shopkeeper. The goal is to take on a role that allows you to step into an engaging character. This will help both you and your group members step into surplus reality. Some examples of roles you might take on as shopkeeper include an apothecary in an apothecary shop, or proprietor in an old-time general store, a wizard, a quirky old auntie, a Renaissance jester, or a guru who is calmly determined to help shoppers get what they truly need. It’s helpful to use props and costumes to help you step fully into the role of shopkeeper and make your role more vivid and enchanting.
Before the group is set to begin, it is helpful to identify where in the room you will set up the Magic Shop. If time for your group is limited, it’s helpful to set up the Magic Shop before group begins. If you have the luxury of time, you can use setting up the shop as part of the warm-up. Inviting group members to dset up the shop can help group members warm up to the characteristics or qualities they might need or need or need more of.
How you set up the shop is limited only by your imagination and the time you have available. If time is limited and you feel like you can act your way through it, you can have the shop be empty and have group members imagine for themselves the qualities they’d like get from the shop. Another strategy is to write qualities on sheets of paper, as you would with floor checks, indicating your shops inventory. This can be useful if you already have an idea about what your group members may be shopping for. Jen and I prefer to use props, cloth, musical instruments, posters or colorful vials to give our shop a more “magical” vibe.
Once your shop is set up, a compelling way to introduce the Magic Shop is to invite participants either to walk through the shop or imagine peering in through the windows to look at the “merchandise” they will be bartering for. The “shop keeper’s” (director’s) opening sets the tone, sparks participants’ imaginations, and establishes the central metaphor of the exercise. It’s helpful to remind participants that meaningful change requires both desire and willingness to let go of something that no longer serves us. The following script illustrates one way to introduce the Magic Shop. You can adapt the language to fit your own style and the role you will play as shopkeeper, as well as to fit the needs of the group and developmental level of the participants.
Step right up. Come one. Come all. Welcome to the Magic Shop! In this shop you will find any trait, quality or characteristic that you wish you had or wish you had more of. This isn’t the shop where you find the Barbie Doll you wanted for Christmas when you were five or the chemistry set or telescope you wanted when you were 10. Nor will you be able to find perky breasts, six-pack abs, or a pill that instantly takes off unwanted pounds. In this shop, you can find qualities like peace, happiness, serenity, joy, hope, and authenticity. It is also a shop that helps you gain fulfilling relationships, better sex, success, prosperity, security, spiritual connection, a felt sense of safety, love, and self-esteem. All you have to do is name what you want, and you are on your way to getting it.
Ah! But what is it that you truly want? This may be an easy question to answer, but if it isn’t, think about the areas in your life where you feel the most longing, sadness, frustration, or fear. If you are you struggling because you and your partner seem to be drifting apart and/ or are either not getting along or because you are tired of feeling alone, perhaps what you might be looking for is love or intimacy. If you feel like your life has become a meaningless blur of “get up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat” or you feel like you are living on autopilot, perhaps you could use a little spontaneity. If you have a sense that you are not being true to yourself – living the life your parents, your partner, or the society laid out for you or living in a body that does not match how you feel inside, perhaps you’d like some authenticity. If you find yourself working your fingers to the bone but have nothing to show for it, perhaps you could use some success or some prosperity. If you feel hopeless, perhaps you could use a bit of spiritual connection or a dab of hope.
There is one little catch. In order to get this desired quality, you have to give up something else. It’s only fair. Besides, there is probably something in your way – a characteristic or attribute that you have been holding on to that keeps you from getting what you want. For example, if you tend to be stubborn, your stubbornness has probably served you well. It might have even given you the tenacity you needed to survive your childhood or the gumption you needed to graduate. But stubbornness can get in the way of having intimate relationships, especially if being right becomes more important than hearing and respecting your partner. Going through the motions of life or living the life your parents dreamed of may be life sucking, but it’s predictable and safe. As long as you don’t take risks and express your true self, you don’t have to worry so much about being rejected.
This is the hard part. You have to take a serious inventory of your life and decide whether or not you really want to change. Are you willing to give up being right or having the last word in order to have a better relationship? Are you willing to take the risk to be yourself in order to have more authenticity? Are you willing to give up or cut back on your drinking and/or drug use in order to pursue your dreams full tilt? Can you let go of the story you have been telling yourself for years that you are a failure in order to notice how successful you really are and become even more successful?
Once you’ve said your spiel, invite group members to tune into a quality or characteristic they want or want more of. Jen and I like to invite group members to come into the shop and browse at the props to identify which prop or cloth could represent what it is that they want. We either have them do this in pairs and share with each other as they shop or shop and then pair and share.
Once you’ve warmed people up to the issue they are looking at, ask who is interested in being the first customer. When the customer asks for the qualitythey are seeking, your job as shop keeper is to help them explore the request by asking questions of why they want the quality or characteristic, how much of it they want and how they plan to use it. When you’ve assessed this, you are ready to begin the bartering process. Remind the customer that that there is no money changing hands, not even in fantasy because the items in the store cannot be bought with money. Instead, customers are expected to trade in a quality or characteristic that they either hold dear or that they have too much of (Barbour, 1992). Very often these qualities or characteristics get in the way of getting or having what they want.
In the bartering phase, it can be helpful to assist customers to reframe the qualities they might want to give up. This can also help clarify how the quality they are willing to give up has served them even as it gets in the way. For example, while fear might block a customer’s access to their creativity, it might be useful for teenagers who’s lack of fear sometimes leads them to make less than optimal decisions. It’s helpful to have customers identify how much of this quality they are realistically willing and able to give up. For example, while people pleasing may lead to a lot of burnout, resentment, loss of identity, anxiety and depression, a little people pleasing can grease the wheels of relationships. Taking your partner to see a band they love that you’re not familiar with can make them feel seen and cared for. Doing what your boss wants, the way they want it, can help you keep your job.
After a bit of haggling, let the customer have what they are asking for. Sometimes, it’s good to them invite customers to practice using the quality they’ve purchased. For example, if they purchased patience, ask them to think of an upcoming situation in which they might need some patience. Perhaps, they are quite tech savvy and work with a colleague who struggles with technology. Other times, all that is necessary is to help customers anchor the quality in their bodies. For example, ask them, “Where do you feel courage in your body?” What movement or gesture can help you remember that that quality is there? It can even be a sound. We had a group member who had a lot of children so was constantly doing laundry. She associated her newly obtained quality with the buzz the drier makes when the load is done.
Finally, as noted earlier, you can modify the theme of the shop to meet the needs of your group. For example, Rustin and Olsson (1993) describe how they use Sobriety Shop with their substance use disorder treatment groups. Compassion Shop has been used with helping professionals and care givers who struggle with compassion fatigue. Jen Salimbene uses Magic Shop as a closure activity to help group members identify their gains and achievement the as a closure activity for the Core Training group she co-leads with Judy Swallow. The possibilities are endless, so step into your creativity to design a shop that meets the needs of your group and have fun!
References:
Barbour, A. (1992) Purpose and strategy behind the Magic shop. Journal of Group Psychotherapy, Psychodrama and Sociometry, 45, 91-101
Moreno, J. L. (1964). Psychodrama, Vol. I. (3rd ed.). New York: Beacon House.
RUSTIN, T. A., & OLSSON, P. A. (1993). Sobriety Shop-A Variation on Magic Shop for Addiction Treatment Patients. Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Group Psychotherapy, 46(1), 12-23.