Background:Drama therapy as a discipline in clinical and public health areas dates back to movements in the Netherlands,Great Britain and the United States of America in the 1960s.Today,drama therapy comprises a huge ...Background:Drama therapy as a discipline in clinical and public health areas dates back to movements in the Netherlands,Great Britain and the United States of America in the 1960s.Today,drama therapy comprises a huge variety of methods and is applied in numerous medical domains such as psychiatry,pediatrics and neurogeriatrics.Nonetheless,historical and philosophical considerations suggest that at all times dramatic arts have encompassed curative potential and helped to promote mental health.Regarding this perspective,the present article aims to explore the spirit of drama therapy in ancient Chinese and Greek cultures.Methods:Involving cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology,comparative research centred around salutary momentums inhering in drama and dramatic practices in Ancient China and Greece.The entire research process consisted of three phases:(i)screening of ancient Chinese and Greek dramatic rituals and arts to select phenomena and genres with pathological,therapeutic and mental health relevance;(ii)medical ontological processing,in particular from a psychopathological,psychiatric,psychotherapeutic and mental health scientific point of view,to explore and elucidate their curative and preventative features;(iii)transdisciplinary considerations about the evolution of drama therapy,as well as their diverse modes of artistic and medical reasoning.Results:The research process resulted in the identification of five(functional)roots of drama therapy,as well as public health benefits of dramatic arts:(i)dramatic rituals,stage-trance settings and spiritual immersion,(ii)mise-en-scène of divine spheres and alternative worlds,as well as scenic imagination and creative fusion of reality and fantasy,desire and satisfaction,(iii)anthropologic ontology,search of meaning and self-actualisation‘beyond codes and conventions’,(iv)personality traits and differential psychological symbolism,aesthetic self-exploration and auxiliary egos,(v)introjection and role-identity,inventive ways to tackle life problems,‘working through’and catharsis.Conclusion:Interdisciplinary constructivist reasoning suggests that dramatic arts and drama therapy share similar health promoting potential and innate therapeutic power.This calls for further research(i)to explore the entire spectrum of curative factors inhering in dramatic entities,(ii)to explain how drama-based interventions may alleviate mental-health issues alongside culturally sensitive differential diagnostic guidelines,and(iii)to optimise beneficial effects through advanced drama therapeutic settings.The present study suggests that dramatic arts shall also be studied with regard to public health challenges,self-regulation and self-care,mental resilience,well-being and quality of life,and emphatically advocates intensified collaboration between drama theory and drama therapy.展开更多
文摘Background:Drama therapy as a discipline in clinical and public health areas dates back to movements in the Netherlands,Great Britain and the United States of America in the 1960s.Today,drama therapy comprises a huge variety of methods and is applied in numerous medical domains such as psychiatry,pediatrics and neurogeriatrics.Nonetheless,historical and philosophical considerations suggest that at all times dramatic arts have encompassed curative potential and helped to promote mental health.Regarding this perspective,the present article aims to explore the spirit of drama therapy in ancient Chinese and Greek cultures.Methods:Involving cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology,comparative research centred around salutary momentums inhering in drama and dramatic practices in Ancient China and Greece.The entire research process consisted of three phases:(i)screening of ancient Chinese and Greek dramatic rituals and arts to select phenomena and genres with pathological,therapeutic and mental health relevance;(ii)medical ontological processing,in particular from a psychopathological,psychiatric,psychotherapeutic and mental health scientific point of view,to explore and elucidate their curative and preventative features;(iii)transdisciplinary considerations about the evolution of drama therapy,as well as their diverse modes of artistic and medical reasoning.Results:The research process resulted in the identification of five(functional)roots of drama therapy,as well as public health benefits of dramatic arts:(i)dramatic rituals,stage-trance settings and spiritual immersion,(ii)mise-en-scène of divine spheres and alternative worlds,as well as scenic imagination and creative fusion of reality and fantasy,desire and satisfaction,(iii)anthropologic ontology,search of meaning and self-actualisation‘beyond codes and conventions’,(iv)personality traits and differential psychological symbolism,aesthetic self-exploration and auxiliary egos,(v)introjection and role-identity,inventive ways to tackle life problems,‘working through’and catharsis.Conclusion:Interdisciplinary constructivist reasoning suggests that dramatic arts and drama therapy share similar health promoting potential and innate therapeutic power.This calls for further research(i)to explore the entire spectrum of curative factors inhering in dramatic entities,(ii)to explain how drama-based interventions may alleviate mental-health issues alongside culturally sensitive differential diagnostic guidelines,and(iii)to optimise beneficial effects through advanced drama therapeutic settings.The present study suggests that dramatic arts shall also be studied with regard to public health challenges,self-regulation and self-care,mental resilience,well-being and quality of life,and emphatically advocates intensified collaboration between drama theory and drama therapy.
