Dramatherapy - Volume 44, Issue 1, 2024

This article will first consider the relationship between the conscious, unconscious and physical triad of self. Second, the role of symbols and movement in the transmission of unconscious knowledge will be explored. Third, I will question whether unconscious knowledge can be created and transmitted before this knowledge has been consciously experienced. My personal experience will be presented as an example. Suggestions will then be offered to therapeutic practitioners for adaptations to practice when working with clients with chronic disabilities.

People with physical disabilities and age-appropriate cognitive levels of functioning can experience incredible frustration in their opportunities to express and communicate along with societal stigma and assumptions. Dramatherapy, and specifically Drama and Movement Therapy, can be an effective therapeutic method in providing a platform for these clients to find their voice through a range of techniques and stimulation. Providing ‘choice’, building a non-judgemental, trusting therapeutic relationship, along with enabling the client is an essential part of this process.

This article will discuss a Dramatherapist’s experience from an autoethnological perspective with her own limitations in using her voice, in relation to working and enabling non-verbal clients. This will further be supported by case studies, demonstrating working within an effective multidisciplinary team. Joint working will be discussed along with examples of a range of creative and adaptable techniques to assist the individual and their needs. The article will then discuss and conclude with how practitioners can assist these clients to find their voice, by supporting different ways of communication and importantly providing choice.

This paper implements an Autoethnographic lens to explore a newly qualified Dramatherapists relationship to her chronic pain and body, the society is exits within, the process of overcoming internalised stigma and the journey taken through training. An analysis of how society has impacted the authors relationship of her body that is affected by chronic pain will take place, as well as unpacking her experiences of having chronic pain and endometriosis. Chronic pain has been a constant within the authors adult life. This pain and societies attitudes toward disability informed a belief that becoming a Dramatherapist was not an achievable ambition. The author will delineate the steps taken, challenges overcome and drastic shifts in thinking that took place before training, during and once qualified. Through this Autoethnographic exploration of the authors lived experiences, she discovered the essential pillars of turning surviving into thriving were community, connection, education and self-advocacy.

This article explores how having two non-visible disabilities, Optic Disc Coloboma and Addison’s Disease, has contributed to my development as a dramatherapist. I consider how disability led to me linking health and the arts, how my identity and therapeutic practice has developed alongside expectations, knowledge and consequences of disability. I reflect on how the translucence of my disabilities, where little is certain, developed my understanding of self and therapy. I then discuss how the specifics of my disability have led to an engagement with the effects of the hormone cortisol when considering the therapist-client relationship. Finally, I consider possible benefits of making non-visible disabilities more visible.

This piece stems from my own experience of a threshold consciousness that followed life-or-death surgery in 2015, when surgeons had informed me that I had only 2 days to live and offered me 2 days palliative care as an alternative choice. My survival of the surgery together with the experience of that threshold consciousness led me to a re-appraisal of my own practice in Dramatherapy. Out of my personal survival of a state bordering on death, I invite contemplation of different levels of consciousness experienced and the internal and external dramas encountered and pondering questions as to how we all may access clearer and more conscious perspectives of ourselves and fuller potentials of physical, mental, emotional, psychological, cosmic and spiritual resources for self-knowledge and consciousness than may be offered by current states of the current material scientific world view alone.

This article is an attempt to convey a sense of how it feels to live with dyspraxia and how creating imagery can be effective in dulling some of the experienced difficulties. It addresses, in particular, problems that arise during training group warm-up sessions.