Dramatherapy is now well-established and widely used in a variety of settings with diverse groups of people. In this book, Sue Jennings presents a ‘healing theatre’ approach to dramatherapy, showing how it is part of our total cultural experience of theatre art, and how it can be used to find a bearable means of facing the beast at the heart of the labyrinth.
Challenging received views from psychology and psychotherapy on the theoretical base of dramatherapy, she argues that the dramatic development of the individual is a primary developmental process, which is influential from conception and is shaped by cultural context. She maintains that by participating in drama and theatre as well as exploring our ‘dramatic’ past, a new pathway to self-knowledge and fulfilment is opened as a viable alternative to conventional practice.
Illustrated with many examples, the book also includes exercises and questionnaires which can be used in practice, with students, or for self-study, illuminating the relationship between theatre and healing, and the theatrical basis of dramatherapy.
Challenging received views from psychology and psychotherapy on the theoretical base of dramatherapy, she argues that the dramatic development of the individual is a primary developmental process, which is influential from conception and is shaped by cultural context. She maintains that by participating in drama and theatre as well as exploring our ‘dramatic’ past, a new pathway to self-knowledge and fulfilment is opened as a viable alternative to conventional practice.
Illustrated with many examples, the book also includes exercises and questionnaires which can be used in practice, with students, or for self-study, illuminating the relationship between theatre and healing, and the theatrical basis of dramatherapy.
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Reviews
My clinical background is very different from that of a dramatherapist and I was eager to find out whether my interest would be sustained throughout the book and whether I might be stimulated to find out more. I was pleasantly surprised. In summary I found this book to be both interesting and enjoyable as an introduction to the subject of Dramatherapy, without being overwhelming.
I am extremely grateful to Sue for opening up immense possibilities of our work - dramatherapy is a "therapy of optimism", as this book describes; a therapy that does not simply reach back endlessly into our individual pasts for clues to the present, but states now, in the immediacy of the present, our hopes, fears, needs, desires, thereby weaving us a direct thread to our collective future, as well as our past. As you take hold of the thread of this book, I hope your journey is as exciting and fruitful as mine continues to be.