Drama therapy is a special type of art therapy that has become quite popular in the correction of various behavioral disorders and personality problems. She uses such a widespread technique as playing out a plot. Above all, it must be remembered that drama therapy is always a game, that is, a type of activity focused on the process and on pleasure in this process.
Drama therapy is a new direction of art therapy, gaining momentum and becoming fashionable these days. She uses such a widespread technique as dramatization, i.e. playing out any plot. And although it is called drama therapy, it is based on the art of theater, not drama.
This trend harnesses the power of art in the therapeutic process to gain access to latent healing resources in working with clients. The client’s creative expression reflects both the cause and the nature of the mental disorder, and it also contributes to the client’s reintegration and dissociative states. It promotes the introduction of wholeness in a fragmented consciousness and has the effect of healing the traumatized self in suffering.
Fields of application of drama therapy:
- Interpersonal and intrapersonal problems,
- Family and child-parent therapy,
- Organizational consulting,
- Development of creativity in a particular profession,
- Borderline disorders
- Psychosomatics.
Aims of Drama
The main goals include the elimination of tension, the development of creative qualities, imagination, and the ability to empathize. After such sessions, patients become more self-confident, the level of responsibility rises, thoughts and aspirations are corrected. In addition, the methods of psychology using drama therapy also solve the following problems:
- increase social interaction and interpersonal understanding;
- help to acquire the ability to relax;
- allow you to learn how to control your emotions;
- provide an opportunity to change negative behavior;
- help to expand the repertoire of life scenarios;
- give the opportunity to acquire the ability to act spontaneously;
- develop thinking and concentration;
- strengthen self-confidence, increase self-esteem and intrapersonal intelligence.
Drama therapy tasks
The main tasks of drama therapy include:
- Awareness of partners of body and behavior.
- Development of improvisation and spontaneity.
- Improving the ability to model your life.
- The ability to replay life situations.
- The development of plastics.
- Opportunities for internal change.
- The ability to return to the past and look into the future.
- Stage plastics.
- Working with weapons, voice.
- Sketches and dances, pantomime.
- Dramatization of legends, myths, dreams, fairy tales.
- Theater of improvisation.
Variants of plastics on stage: fencing, movements, sketches, “bows” and dances.
The drama therapy process is not an “urgent repair”, it is a subtle and empathic work with a client, and just like physical healing, it takes a certain amount of time. However, this work is a great pleasure.
Using the magic power of art, drama therapy expands our consciousness, the range of behavioral strategies, helps to work out new, more creative ways of interacting with the world.
Types and techniques of drama therapy
Personality psychology is most fully revealed when working with a group of people. However, there are also individual lessons, which are conducted by the dramatists. There are various types and techniques of the drama therapy method, which, through creative self-expression, help to understand the cause and nature of psychological disorder.
Dramatization – acting out, any plot that is most often used in psychodrama, as well as in transverse analysis and some other directions.
Therapeutic theater is a therapy method that is performed by a specially trained therapist and requires music, dance, makeup, painting, writing, and more.
Drama support groups are an excellent therapy method that is based on working with a group of people. Thanks to this type, the range of behavioral strategies expands, new ways of interacting with the world are being worked out.
Dramatization of dreams is carried out through the transformation of thoughts into various figurative situations.
The comedy of masks “Del Arte” is a process of spontaneous play, in which the participants transform into the heroes of the theater “Del Apte”. The situations that are relevant to him are played, and the characters of the actors are recognized in the group members. In addition, medieval theater, cheerleading and therapeutic theater are very often used.
Approaches to understanding drama therapy
Systemic relationships of paratheatrical disciplines
There are two approaches to a systemic understanding of drama therapy:
- drama as therapy, that is, understanding drama therapy as a kind of psychotherapeutic method, as a kind of art therapy;
- drama in therapy, that is, the use of dramatic therapeutic methods within the framework of “large” schools of psychotherapy, primarily in gestalt therapy and in behavioral therapy.
Drama therapy, which claims its place in the paratheatrical system, distances itself from related art therapy disciplines. The position of drama therapy in this system can be determined using various approaches:
- by belonging to already constituted areas with a stable paradigm: as part of applied psychology – psychotherapy, as part of special (medical) pedagogy, or as a completely authentic area of interdisciplinary nature;
- as one of the disciplines of widely understood art therapy (i.e. art therapy);
- as expressive or activity therapy;
- as non-verbal therapy (in contrast to the “big” word-based psychotherapy schools);
- as a therapeutic and educational discipline (or therapeutic and educational in the psychological sense) together with art, music, poetry, bibliography, dance and movement therapy or with other systems, such as activity, concentrative movement, play, etc. therapies;
- as one of the paratheatrical systems of a therapeutic nature, along with psychodrama, sociodrama, satidrama, theatrical therapy, psychogymnastics, psycho-musical drama, or paratheatrical systems of an educational and educational nature, such as educational drama and educational theater, or paratheatrical systems used in the social sphere ( Boal stage applications such as forum theater, invisible theater, legislative theater, street theater).
Drama therapy in addiction treatment
Dramatherapy is a new direction in art therapy. It uses such a widespread technique, like playing a story.
In addition, it must be remembered that Dramatherapy is always a game that is a kind of activity focused on the process and pleasure in this process.
The strength and depth of the impact of Dramatherapy is related to the ability to recall and experience new life events in a new way, to look at them with different eyes. “Life is a game, a theater.”
