The paper deals with a dramatherapy through a lens of infant’s emotional development and its relation to maternal care by a leading object relations theorist, Donald Winnicott. His theory focuses on the relationship between a mother and her infant a...
The paper deals with a dramatherapy through a lens of infant’s emotional development and its relation to maternal care by a leading object relations theorist, Donald Winnicott. His theory focuses on the relationship between a mother and her infant and provides a rationale of how arts serve as a therapy. Born to a mother, a child is greatly affected by the early attachment to his or her mother, which in turn plays a big part in building their future relationships to others as well as developing their own character. According to Winnicott, the infant’s emotional development consists of three stages with their own distinctive features: absolute dependence, relative dependence, and dependence toward independence. Winnicott pointed out that it is only playing that allows humans to develop their personality as a whole and to foster creativity, which helps them find out who they really are. Transitional experience gained from playing these games helps people relieve the stress they get from social relationships. Sue Jennings, on the other hand, identified a unique developmental paradigm of embodiment-projection-role (EPR hereafter) which follows the progress of humans’ dramatic play and noted that these stages are essential for the children’s developmental processes. The EPR helps people not only realize who they are but also what relation they have to others. The developmental process of the Sue Jennings’ theory correspond roughly to those of Winnicott’s and have a lot in common. Therefore, by considering the observations from both humans’ dramatic and emotional developmental characteristics, the paper mainly concerns itself with understanding of subjects, realistic approaches to them, the roles therapists can play, and some case reports involved.
The paper assumes that a good trust between patients and therapists can be built during the EPR and that successful drama therapists can create an environment where patients can develop creativity to adapt themselves to each of the developmental stages.
A Dramatherapy corresponds to what Winnicott calls a potential space, where humans can ease tensions from their relations to themselves and outside world. In addition, the multimodality of playing allows patients to develop their most total, multi-level personalities. In other words, dramatherapy provides a potential environment where patients can engage in various communicative activities through the EPR and they can also be encouraged to show what is inside their mind.
The embodiment corresponds to the period of absolute dependency by Winnicott. Such disorders as distraction, excessive bodily movement, and inattention usually found in the embodiment can be attributed to the intervention of outside world occurring in the absolute dependency period. For patients with those disorders, therefore, it may take a long time to build reliable relationships with others, which is why play therapists are well advised to restore a sense of security for those patients by offering them what, in Winnicott’s term, is a holding environment. By actively participating in the embodiment, patients have the chance to spontaneously express their own feelings, to enjoy again an illusion of being omnipotence, and to learn about their bodies. All of these can help the patients struggling with problems from the absolute dependency period. A patient, 7-year-old under a false name ‘Infant’, used to have embodiment problems of aggressively jumping into others and then quickly removing himself from them. The child also found it hard to play “it” in a hide-and-seek game. After, however, his extended exposure to a variety of physical activities and mimicking, he gradually became accustomed to his environment not to mention his being able to play “it” in a game.
The projection, the equivalent of Winnicott’s relative dependency period, assumes that people can divide the world into ‘me’ and ‘not-me’. For patients having problems from this period, projection can especially be a difficult thing to do. With mothers repeatedly failing to meet their needs, infants no longer think of their mothers as being omnipotent, feeling pressured to deal with the mixed feelings they have for their mothers. In this case, therapists also need to pretend not to meet those infants’ needs in the same way that their mothers failed to do. On top of this, the therapists should help the infants to face their problems and to put things into perspective. This kid of activity is helpful in revealing patients’ hidden problems and bringing them under control. While a 47-year-old long-time depression sufferer with an alias of Assi had problems with projection, she managed to solve them by picking out figures represent people she hated and placing them according to the relationship to herself.
The role is roughly similar to the dependency period toward independency by Winnicott. Taking on a role in society can be considered as a socialization process. It is in this period that various kinds of experience play a big part. One’s socialization is facilitated by a variety of role-playing, which assumes that people with clear understanding of their roles interact with one another in two different situations. It is therapists’ job in this period to makes sure that patients become the persons they are acting spontaneously as well as genuinely. A 16-year-old teenager using ‘Celebrity’ as a false name failed to dedicate herself on her assigned role in a role-play only to giggle or chat. However, she started focusing on her role after the therapist’s effort to pay a full attention to his or her role in a scene.
Dramatherapy is significantly different from psychotherapy in that it involves patients participating in various sorts of communications and playing in person their assigned roles.
The therapists have to act as a mirror reflecting what is inside the patients. To that end, it is esse