Skip to content
1981
Volume 44, Issue 2-3
  • ISSN: 0263-0672
  • E-ISSN: 2157-1430

Abstract

Cultural trauma is passed down through generations, influencing interpersonal relations. Avoidance or denial of intergenerational cultural trauma’s (ICT) cumulative effects can impede dramatherapists’ ability to analyse countertransference and develop cultural empathy. Lack of exploration of how personal cultural context intersects with that of clients can hinder self-knowledge and recognition of similarities, differences and tensions within the therapeutic relationship. This article details my retrospective identification of ICT’s influence while working with a refugee and asylum seeker drama group prior to my dramatherapeutic training. I analyse how limited knowledge of ICT hindered productive exploration of the participants’ racialised perspectives. Contrastingly, Thorn’s 2011 case study exemplifies how ICT engagement can increase a dramatherapist’s self-knowledge and understanding of client experiences and perspectives. This article explores how discomfort elicited by racial and ethnic focus can lead to avoidance, diminishing the dramatherapist’s ability to understand clients’ lived experience. It also pinpoints colour-blind racial ideology’s negative impact, alongside the limitations of intellectual understanding alone when engaging with cultural realities. Consequently, this article promotes experiential exploration of cultural context in dramatherapy training. It supports incorporation of Powell’s Embodied Multicultural Assessment model, with additional ICT focus, as this could prove invaluable to trainees’ professional development.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1177/02630672231207044
2024-06-07
2026-04-20

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adams M (2014) The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist Private Life, Professional Practice. London: Routledge; Taylor & Francis.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Adonis CK (2017) Generational victimhood in post-apartheid South Africa: Perspectives of descendants of victims of apartheid era gross human rights violations. International Review of Victimology 24(1): 4765.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Africa Check (2018) FACTSHEET: South Africa’s official poverty numbers. Available at: https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/factsheets/factsheet-south-africas-official-poverty-numbers (accessed 7 September 2022).
  4. Alexander JC (2004) Toward a theory of cultural trauma. In: Alexander JC, Eyerman R, Giesen B, et al.. (eds) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 130.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bilodeau S, Bleuer J, Carr M, et al.. (2016) British Association of Dramatherapists Intercultural Good Practice Guidelines. Available at: https://www.badth.org.uk/ (accessed 5 February 2021).
  6. Blumenfeld WJ (2012) On The discursive construction of jewish ‘racialization’ and ‘race passing’: Jews as ‘u-boats’ with a mysterious ‘queer light’. Journal of Critical Thought & Praxis 1(1): 31274.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Burkard AW, Knox S (2004) Effect of therapist color-blindness on empathy and attributions in cross-cultural counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology 51(4): 387397.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Comas-Dǭaz L (2000) An ethnopolitical approach to working with people of color. The American Psychologist 55(11): 13191325.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Constantine MG (2001) Multicultural training, theoretical orientation, empathy, and multicultural case conceptualization ability in counselors. Journal of Mental Health Counseling: 234(4): 357372.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Constantine MG, Gainor A (2001) Emotional intelligence and empathy: Their relation to multi-cultural counseling knowledge and awareness. Professional School Counselling 5(2): 131137.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Dictado J, Torres-Harding SR (2022) Predictors of and invalidating microaggressions with sexual and racial minority therapy clients. Training and Education in Professional Psychology 17: 304313.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Dokter D (1998) Being a migrant, working with migrants: Issues of identity and embodiment. In: Dokter D (ed.) Arts Therapists, Refugees and Migrants: Reaching Acrossborders. London; Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley, pp. 145154.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Dokter D (2000) Intercultural dramatherapy practice: A research history. Dramatherapy : The Journal of the Association for Dramatherapists 22(3): 38.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Gelso CJ, Mohr JJ (2001) The working alliance and the transference/countertransference relationship: Their manifestation with racial/ethnic and sexual orientation minority clients and therapists. Applied & Preventive Psychology 10(1): 5168.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Goldberg A (2011) The enduring presence of Heinz Kohut: Empathy and its vicissitudes. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 59(2): 289312.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Guralnik O (2016) Sleeping dogs: Psychoanalysis and the socio-political. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 26(6): 655663.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Hays PA (2008) Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice, Second Edition: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Holmes DE (2016) Culturally imposed trauma: The sleeping dog has awakened. will psychoanalysis take heed? Psychoanalytic Dialogues 26(6): 641654.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Hudson CC, Adams S, Lauderdale J (2016) Cultural expressions of intergenerational trauma and mental health nursing implications for U.S. Health Care Delivery following refugee resettlement: An integrative review of the literature. Journal of Transcultural Nursing 27(3): 286301.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Jun H (2010) Social Justice, Multicultural Counseling, and Practice: Beyond a Conventional Approach. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Maynard K (2018) To be black, to be a woman. can dramatherapy help black women to discover their true self despite racial and gender oppression? Dramatherapy 39(1): 3148.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Mayor C (2012) Playing with race: A theoretical framework and approach for creative arts therapists. The Arts in Psychotherapy 39(3): 214219.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Neville HA, Awad GH, Brooks JE, et al.. (2013) Color-blind racial ideology: Theory, training, and measurement implications in psychology. American Psychologist 68(6): 455466.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Nowakowski A (2016) You poor thing: A retrospective autoethnography of visible chronic illness as a symbolic vanishing act. Qualitative Report 21(9): 16151635.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Powell A (2016) Embodied multicultural assessment: An interdisciplinary training model. Drama Therapy Review 2(1): 111122.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Sajnani N (2013) The Body Politic: The relevance of an intersectional framework for therapeutic performance research in drama therapy. The Arts in Psychotherapy 40(4): 382385.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Sajnani N (2016) Borderlands: Diversity and social justice in drama therapy. Drama Therapy Review 2(1): 38.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Sharp J (2008) Fortress SA: Xenophobic violence in South Africa. Anthropology Today 24(4): 13.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Smelser N (2004) Psychological trauma and cultural trauma. In: Alexander JC, Eyerman R, Giesen B, et al.. (eds) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 3159.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Smith M (2015) Nagweyaab Geebawug: A retrospective autoethnography of the lived experience of kidney donation. CANNT Journal (1996) 25(4): 1318.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Thorn R (2011) Sugar and spice and all things nice: A black woman’s anger in a forensic setting. In: Dokter D, Holloway P, Seebohm H (eds) Dramatherapy and Destructiveness. New York: Routledge, pp. 133144.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Tummala-Narra P (2016) Discussion of ‘culturally imposed trauma: The sleeping dog has awakened. will psychoanalysis take heed?’ Commentary on the Paper by Dorothy Evans Holmes. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 26(6): 664672.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Walker M (2010) When racism gets personal: Toward relational healing. In: Jordan JV (ed.) The Power of Connection: Recent Developments in Relational-cultural Theory. New York: Routledge, pp. 6983.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Wendt DC, Gone JP, Nagata DK (2015) Potentially harmful therapy and multicultural counseling: Bridging two disciplinary discourses. The Counseling Psychologist 43(3): 334358.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1177/02630672231207044
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test