"This book offers an innovative approach to healing and transformation through application of the 12 transpersonal drama therapy principles. It demonstrates a host of therapeutic techniques integrating the arts with meditation as clients heal traumatic memories and shift their identities from a conditioned, limited sense of self to the essential Self, or soul Self."
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The Heart and Soul of Psychotherapy:
A Transpersonal Approach Through Theater Arts edited by Saphira Barbara Linden Trafford Publishing
book review by Carol Anderson, D.Min., ACSW, LMSW
This psychotherapy training book is written by 39 authors who work in the field of drama therapy, psychodrama, and transformational theater. The book is divided into five parts: 1) Foundations of Transpersonal Drama Therapy, 2) Private Practice with Individuals, Couples and Groups, 3) Community Healing, 4) International Venues, and 5) Transformational Theater Process and Performances. The 12 Principles of Omega Transpersonal Drama Therapy—assuming health rather than pathology, focusing on the essential Self, embodying therapeutic issues, making the unconscious conscious, working with archetypes, embracing love and holding all emotions as sacred, creating sacred space, experiencing interconnectedness and unity, seeking mastery, achieving balance, exploring life purpose, and creating one's life as a work of art—are utilized to help transform trauma into healing. The work is inspired by Jungian dreamwork and alchemy, Sufism, transpersonal psychology, psychodrama, and drama therapy. Sometimes philosophical, sometimes spiritual, sometimes experiential, sometimes all three, the book offers significant wisdom in the healing arts.
The works in this book are engaging, professionally written, insightful, and more importantly, soulful, for it is the soul of therapy that this book embodies. The practitioners are ones who show their dedication and commitment to the transformational paths of their clients, and the clients' own stories add very powerful messages to these writings. An enjoyable read, the book focuses on a variety of techniques to use with many different persons/groups who are on their healing paths. While the use of logo (talk) therapy is valuable in a therapeutic process, this book relates the value of using the right brain—creative brain—for healing and giving people ways to heal beyond using the left brain—literal/language—for transformation. While it is written for those in the healing arts, it is a book that can provide healing and help empower the work of all of those in the helping professions as well as those on their own paths of finding their authentic selves.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review