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Light a Candle
Elaine Eller Goldman was a dynamic individual who led an extremely eclectic life. She was a Certified Psychodrama Director and Trainer who established two training institutes and trained hundreds of therapists over the years. She was the oldest of three children. Her younger brothers were Paul and Karl. She had three children herself, Robbie, Sally and Mark. She was also an artist and sculptress and sculpted many pieces over the years. Elaine spent many years in the theatre as a set designer, lighting designer, stage manager and director. She attended Purdue University in the theatre department and directed several university productions there. In December of 1961, she was the assistant to Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, William Saroyan and also stage managed the World Premier of three plays he had written there. She attended Mundelein University in Chicago and was one of the first women to receive her Masters in Theatre and a Ph. D. in Psychology. She then went to the Moreno Institute in Beacon New York where she was trained by J.L Moreno, creator of the method, and was ceetified as a Director two years later. Eventually she was certified as a Trainer/Educator/Practitioner (TEP) in Psychodrama. She established the Mid-Western Institute for Psychodrama where she began to train other therapists in the method. She was on the governing board of the ASGPP, the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama and was also on the ethics committee. In 1975, She moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where she began to do psychodrama at the Camelback Psychiatric Hospital. She established the Camelback Hospitals Western Institute for Psychodrama and continued to train therapists from all over the world. Over 20 years, she directed more than 10,000 sessions with patients, clients and students. Along with her co-therapist, Delcy Morrison, she wrote Psychodrama: Content and Process, which was recognized as one of the leading texts on the method. The book was eventually translated and published in Japanese. She also produced one of the premier instructional video tapes of the method. She is survived by her brother Karl Eller; daughter, Sally Goldman Scott; son, Mark Goldman; four grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
