Jacob L. Moreno

Jacob Levy Moreno (1889 to 1974) was a Romanian-born American psychiatrist, psychosociologist and educator, best remembered as the founder of psychodrama and a leading pioneer of group psychotherapy. Born in Bucharest and raised in Vienna, he took a medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1917 and early on rejected Freudian analysis, preferring to work with people in groups and in action. In Vienna he began an improvisational theatre company, the Theater of Spontaneity, where psychodrama took shape as a therapy built on improvised role-play. After moving to the United States in 1925 he developed sociometry, group psychotherapy and related methods in New York, introduced group psychotherapy to the American Psychiatric Association in 1932, and was recognised in his lifetime as one of the leading social scientists.