Masters of their conditions II: intercultural theatre, narration and stage work with patients and healers.

Full Abstract

What can a healer learn from theatre and performance studies? What can theatre and performance studies bring to healing practices? Both disciplines are distinct in Western societies, at times merged into miscellaneous forms of 'art therapy'. What lessons can we learn from traditions that do not separate these competencies and have always integrated them as being naturally complementary? In a consultation of cultural psychiatry, both patients and healers are actively aware of various degrees of merging of art and medicine. Narration, then, cannot be limited to verbal case-history making and verbal therapeutic approaches. Bringing patients and healers on a stage and using all forms of text and performance allow for another way of (re)constructing case histories. Expanding the narrative process opens doors to exploring traditions: their origin, their apprenticeship, their performance and their transmission.

Author information

Author/s: Arpin, Jacques (J);

Affiliation: Cultural Psychiatry and Counsulting, Geneva, Switzerland. j.arpin(-atsign-)bluewin.ch

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Case Reports; Journal Article

Journal: Transcultural psychiatry (Transcult Psychiatry), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Sep; vol 45 (issue 3) : pp 355-78

Dates: Created 2008/09/18; Completed 2008/12/19;

PMID: 18799638, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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