Anna Halprin by Ursula Schorn

Author:Ursula Schorn [Gabriele Wittmann, Ursula Schorn and Ronit Land]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857008510
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2014-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

THE THERAPIST’S RESPONSIBILITY

Just as the ground carries the weight of the body, so the therapist bears responsibility for the therapeutic process. He or she is responsible for creating an atmosphere in which security, trust and mutual esteem can grow. Security comes from clear, transparent structures. At the beginning of therapy the therapist tells the client about the way of working and his or her understanding of the therapeutic relationship, making it clear that therapeutic goals will emerge from the dialogue about biographical material, and can be redefined many times in the course of therapy.13 The structures for doing therapy together become clear, and open up opportunities for the client to make an active contribution to their own process. The task of the therapist is to make mutually agreed goals accessible by choosing appropriate methods.14 They must be able to act with spontaneity and flexibility, and to adapt Life/Art Process methods – be it the Movement Ritual, the process of psychokinetic visualisation or the development of a performance or ritual – to the specific emotional, mental and physical state of the client. Repeated decision-making is characteristic of the therapeutic path, which follows the principles of the creative process and the Five-Part Process. Direct or indirect questions to the client keep opening up new angles on his or her particular process: On which of the four levels of awareness can the person be reached, and what is the Gestalt that is starting to emerge? How is therapy going? Which of the five stages is it at? Is it blocked, or making progress? The more clearly and consciously the therapist is able to understand the principles of the creative and therapeutic process and translate them into possibilities for action, the more space for bodily sensing and creative expression will open up in the client, and invite them to act creatively and with self-determination.15 Anna Halprin emphasises this point.

Clear principles of creative action notwithstanding, the processes of discovery and expression entailed in the Life/Art Process, in the connection between bodywork, dance, depiction of internal images and creative writing, can lead to deep levels of emotional experience. Profound levels of experience can be reached rapidly, and often, particularly in cases of trauma, need to be avoided. So the Movement Ritual instruction to lie down on the ground with eyes closed and feel inside oneself may trigger fear in people who need to be very much in control. Through a drawn or painted picture, unconsciously experienced content to which fear is attached may become visible and felt. In the process of converting it into movement (the third stage of psychokinetic visualisation), bodily identification with the drawn image in dance may take the client too rapidly back into a traumatic experience.16 This is what needs to be prevented by prudent management of the therapeutic process.17

The Life/Art Process reaches different levels of therapeutic depth – ‘therapeutic depth’ in the sense of intensity of feeling and degree of cognitive control. The deeper the bodily/emotional experiences, the less control – and so much greater the therapist’s responsibility for managing expressive processes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.