Drama Workshop, Sensitive to stories. Psychodynamic and group analytic reflections on a two-year experience (2007-2009)

A group-centered drama workshop experience took place in the public service Department of Dependency Pathology, uniting health workers and patients in the same expressive adventure: revealing their inner selves. Reading a text with group analytic characteristics allows the therapeutic potential that is typical of theater jargon to be placed in relation with the peculiar, polymorphic features of the current psychopathological condition of the drug addict. The complex creative and artistic process of the drama workshop unfolds through elements such as the exploration of the body and a precise dimension of aesthetics and pleasure - which were traditionally neglected in the cure of drug dependence - and also through a game of improvisation, which together mediate the access to symbolic language and contrast pathological narcissism and alexithymia. The legendary reproduction of the content emerging from the workshop produces a dramatic narrative based on the metaphor of travel, which is analyzed through chosen themes, consenting to highlight the prevalence of the structure vs. content and the role performed by rituals. This thus anticipates the structuring of an open drama community that shares a project for change in social healthcare, as well.

Keywords: Drama workshop, pathological dependencies, alexithymia, legend, structure, rituals.

Alberto Damilano, Il Laboratorio Teatrale Sensibili alle storie. Riflessioni a carattere psicodinamico e gruppoanalitico su due anni di esperienza (2007-2009) in "GRUPPI" 1/2010, pp 141-153, DOI: 10.3280/GRU2010-001012