Therapy Toronto Psychotherapy Definitions

Therapist Match:

Beth Stevenson (midtown Toronto)

Drama Therapy

Drama therapy focuses on the client as a whole, unique individual, and emphasizes working on the here and now, at times an imagined here and now.

Drama therapists believe that imagination and creativity are the safest and shortest routes toward healing, and strive to place the client in an imaginary space where they are free to both be imaginative and creative, better able to confront their fears and emotions, and thereby better able to understand them.

Fritz Perls drew attention to the way in which art, drama in particular, deals with the "unfinished business" of living. The theatre of drama therapy is life - theatre created by the client which deals with his or her own life. Clients may create roles where they encounter actual feeling states. They may cry, feel anger, hope - these are not experienced as fictional. "Real tears are wept, real anger vented, all within a fictional construct" (Jones, 1996, p. vi). The journey of imagination constitutes genuine human experience, something lived through, not simply thought about; having the ability to affect future thoughts, and attitudes towards life.

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