Shakespeare as Prompter
The Amending Imagination and the Therapeutic Process
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-1-85302-158-9 (ISBN)
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Description
Prompting is the thematic thread that pervades the pages of this book. Its primary connotation is that of the prompter who is urgently called into action, at moments of anxiety, when narrative begins to fail. The central dynamic issue concerns the amending imagination as a prompting resource which, through creativity and the aesthetic imperative, can be invoked in this therapeutic space when the patient - through fear, resistance or distraction - is unable to continue with his story. Psychotherapy can be regarded as a process in which the patient is enabled to do for himself what he cannot do on his own. Shakespeare - as the spokesman for all other poets and dramatists - prompts the therapist in the incessant search for those resonant rhythms and mutative metaphors which augment empathy and make for deeper communication and which also facilitates transference interpretation and resolution. The cadence of the spoken word and the different laminations of silence always call for more finely tuned attentiveness than the therapist, unprompted, can offer.
The authors show how Shakespeare can prompt therapeutic engagement with "inaccessible" patients who might otherwise be out of therapeutic reach. At the same time, they demonstrate that the clinical, off-stage world of therapy can also prompt the work of the actor in his on-stage search for representational precision.
The authors show how Shakespeare can prompt therapeutic engagement with "inaccessible" patients who might otherwise be out of therapeutic reach. At the same time, they demonstrate that the clinical, off-stage world of therapy can also prompt the work of the actor in his on-stage search for representational precision.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
bibliography, index
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-85302-158-9 (9781853021589)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
Part 1 The frame of things: introduction; theatre and therapy; the breadth of Shakespearean vision; a sense of direction; the precision of Shakespearean focus; the bottom line. Part 2 Shakespeare as prompter in therapeutic encounters: introduction - language, narrative, therapeutic narration, narrative failure and prompting; narrative failure - in theatre, in therapy - retreating into silence or diversion, retreating into euphemism; the prompting process - in theatre - rehearsal, performance, in therapy - "rehearsal", "performance", narrative momentum; voice - "My Voice is in My Sword"; emphasis, rhythm - overview - voice, acting, action and acting-out and cadence, rhythm, cadence, emphasis in language - punctuation, deixis, emphasis in action - past, future, present, action, motive, motivation, acting-out. Part 3 Shakespeare's paraclinical precision - compromise with chaos: introduction; time - the seeds of time, time as sequence, time as duration; depth - levels of consciousness, dreams, metaphorical language; mutuality - facts and meaning, empathy, modes of contact; mind - "This Tempest in my Mind"; body - "She Shows a Body Rather than a Life"; mind and body - sexuality. Part 4 Theatres of operation: "A Kingdom for a Stage"; introduction; projective possibilities - "Almost in Shape of a Camel?"; clinical compression, subtext and life-sentence - "Into an Hour-Glass!"; forensic psychotherapy as a paradigm - "When Blood is their Argument"; madness - "That Way Madness Lies". Part 5 Clinical phenomenology and Shakespeare: seeing the wood and the trees - "What Wood is This Before Us?"; epilogue - the amending imagination.