The Couch and the Stage

Reviews / Votes

Robert Landy has written a gripping and scholarly book that highlights the importance of re-engaging the imagination and replacing helpless paralysis with effective action in order to resolve people's traumatic past. Since trauma causes people to feel deserted by god and man, engaging with others in play, improvisation, and rhythmical activities, and activating the mirror neurons in the brain, helps them re-establish a sense of synchronicity and human connection, new possibilities, and the transformation of traumatic experiences. -- Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D., medical director, The Trauma Center; director, National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Boston Community Practice Site; professo Robert Landy's brilliant new book provides an extraordinary and needed service to the fields of psychology, psychotherapy and the arts. His insights illuminate distinctions we have not seen before, trace paths that re-order our grasp of the past, and point to the evolution of trends that suggest a more creative and healthy future. This is a book you will re-read and quote; I already have done both. -- Eric Booth, faculty, The Juilliard School; author, The Everyday Work of Art Robert Landy's latest contribution to action psychotherapies is an excellent critical introduction to dramatic and action therapies. Through historical analysis, theoretical discussion, and analysis of clinical practice, Landy demonstrates how creativity, spontaneity, and dramatic therapies constitute an integrative and holistic resource for psychological healing. Clinical case material and assessment resources as well as detailed applications of role method, psychodrama, and developmental transformations with a single client support his theoretical argument for a confluence between contemporary therapeutic healing and shamanism; between dramatic therapies and classic psychoanalysis. This is a must-read not only for therapists but for community activists, advocates, and health or development workers accompanying survivors of economic and political trauma. Landy's discussion of dramatic and action therapies in clinical work with individuals are deeply suggestive of how an exploration of the past through creativity, spontaneity, and dramatic play in the present can serve as critical resources towards the collective construction of a better future and social transformation. -- M. Brinton Lykes, Ph.D., Boston College: professor of community cultural psychology; associate director, Center for Human Rights and International Justic This book is a monumental intellectual achievement destined to become a classic. Landy's cogent and insightful rendering of the roots of action therapies alone provides a rich background study of this important and often poorly understood field. But Landy goes further, placing his own rich contributions to the field within this historic context. The reader is left with valuable tools with which to integrate an understanding of the strengths of the various action therapies and the significant role they play in serving the therapeutic community. The solid intellectual heritage of the field is explored in depth while opening possibilities to the reader for future innovation. A true tour de force, The Couch and the Stage will serve as a foundational guide to students and professionals in the action therapies, psychodynamic, constructivist and cognitive-behavioral therapies for years to come. -- John Woodall, M.D., The Judge Baker Children's Center, Harvard Medical School; founder, The Unity Project. Let's hear your story. More than that, let's act it out. How the result can be so profoundly healing is explained in this superb guide to the action therapies. -- Jonathan Fox, founder, Playback Theatre, New Paltz, New York; editor, The Essential Moreno