Sunday, February 25, 2007

The Gestalt therapist contrives experiments that lead the client to greater awareness and fuller experience of his/her possibilities. Experiments can be focussed on undoing projections or retroflections. They can work to help the client with closure of unfinished gestalts ("unfinished business" such as unexpressed emotions towards somebody in the client's life). There are many kinds of experiments that might be therapeutic. But the essence of the work is that it is experiential rather than interpretive, and in this way distinguishes itself from the psychoanalytic.

Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapy which focuses on here-and-now experience and personal responsibility.

Drama therapy

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Drama therapy, also known as the single word Dramatherapy outside the US, is the intentional use of theater techniques to facilitate personal growth and promote health. Drama therapy is an expressive therapy modality used in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, schools, mental centers, prisons, and businesses. Drama therapy exists in many forms and can be applicable to individuals, couples, families, and various groups.

The use of dramatic process and theater as a therapuetic intervention began with Psychodrama. The field has expanded to allow many forms of theatrical interventions as therapy including role-play, theater games, group-dynamic games, mime, puppetry, and other improvisational techniques. Often, drama therapy is utilized to help a client:

  • Solve a problem
  • Achieve a catharsis
  • Delve into truths about self
  • Understand the meaning of personally resonate images
  • Explore and transcend unhealthy patterns of interaction

Drama therapy is extremely varied in its use, based on the practitioner, the setting and the client. From fully-fledged performances to empty chair role-play, the sessions may involve many variables including the use of a troupe of actors.

1 comment:

Evan said...

Gestalt is experiential but this is an interpretation too.

One of the foundational parts of gestalt is that it is contextual. Our experience is meaningful - meaning is not made up afterwards.

We see a nice-building or and ugly-building or a just-ordinary-building. Not a neutral thing we then decide about.

The purpose of a focus on the experience is to assist us to feel liveliness and assist our interpretations too.!

Evan