Venue: ESS | P.Porto
Date: 18th April 2024
Durantion: 3 hours (from 2pm until 5pm)
Agenda:
- A space of Encouter
- Freedom
- (Self)Discovery
- Surrender
- Play
- Transformation
It was Moreno that used the term Psychodance for the first time as a combination or expansion of Psychodrama through dance (Moreno in Schutzenberger, 1970) but it was Jaime Rojas-Bermudez that developed the concept. While Moreno and his followers used it as one of the special techniques of Psychodrama, Rojas-Bermudez conceived it as a psychotherapeutic technique in itself. In 1961 Rojas-Bermudez was a student of Moreno and directed the first group of Psychodance in Argentine.
Psychodance is a psychotherapeutic technique rooted in the psychodrama framework, which uses the body and the movement as preferential communicational vehicles and the music to support this communication (…), appearing as the instrumentalization of a therapeutic natural expressive capacity: the dance (…). To understand this therapeutic practice from a theoretical perspective, elements of psychodrama (theoretical and technical framework) have been integrated, as well as contributions of Neurophysiology (organic understanding of the processes that support the movement and the phenomena that are unchained) and ethology (study of space, distance, territory and the signals system’s characteristic of the species).
Currently psychodance is seen as the ultimate body psychotherapy, being especially indicated in psychopathy and all psychopathological processes that compromise severely verbal communication: on the one hand, with individuals to whom the word works as a barrier of communication that is hard to overcome (psychopaths , hysterical, manic), on the other hand, patients who have difficulty expressing their feelings and conflicts verbally (obsessive, depressive, phobic and schizophrenic). (Rojas-Bermudez, 1997)
From a professional point of view, we emphasize the enormous potential of psychodance to elaborate internal and vinculares conflicts. The therapeutic strategies that we use are based on body shapes that appear in the scene. We are particularly pleased with the fact that the material is always brought by the protagonists. Similarly to psychodrama, psychodance is not meant to provide answers (from the outside, of our knowledge) to people questions, but
by eliminating verbal communication, we induce the person to use their body as a vehicle of communication, paying more attention to it and putting it in activity. This is one aspect that allows the subtle mobilization of the protagonist to catch him off guard and lead him into a experience that once started is difficult to control. This experience facilitates the release and manifestation of body shapes of each, and is from its observation and reading that we research its contents.
5th International Mental Health Meeting of Romão de Sousa Foundation