Content area
Full Text
Am J Dance Ther (2011) 33:5772
DOI 10.1007/s10465-011-9108-4
Sabine C. Koch Diana Fischman
Published online: 27 April 2011 American Dance Therapy Association 2011
Abstract Dance/movement therapy may be conceptualized as an embodied and enactive form of psychotherapy. The embodied enactive approach looks at individuals as living systems characterized by plasticity and permeability (moment-to-moment adaptations within the self and toward the environment), autonomy, sense-making, emergence, experience, and striving for balance. Enaction and embodiment emphasize the roles that body motion and sensorimotor experience play in the formation of concepts and abstract thinking. A theoretical framework and a perspective on professional practice in dance/movement therapy are herein offered as inuenced by interdisciplinary embodied and enactive approaches deriving from cognitive sciences and phenomenology. The authors assert that dance/ movement therapy, enaction, and embodiment fruitfully contribute to one another.
Keywords Enaction Embodiment Phenomenology
Dance/movement therapy theory Dance/movement therapy
From its very origin, the bodymind relation, interpersonal relations, and the relatedness of the person to the environment have been central to the clinical practice of dance/movement therapy, in which movement and dance as essential
Sabine C. Koch and Diana Fischman equally and jointly contributed to the article.
S. C. Koch (&)
Institute of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Hauptstr. 47-51, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
D. Fischman
Programa de Entrenamiento en Danza Movimiento Terapia de Buenos AiresBrecha, Quesada 3468 C 1430 AXB, Buenos Aires, Argentinae-mail: [email protected]
Embodied Enactive Dance/Movement Therapy
123
58 Am J Dance Ther (2011) 33:5772
means of connectedness and communication are employed to promote the health of individuals, groups, and communities. A current challenge for dance/movement therapy as a eld is to verbalize and develop its theoretical background (e.g., Cruz & Barroll, 2004) in dialogue with its rich and elaborated clinical practice. One way of doing so is to embrace and contribute to existing theoretical traditions that are in accord with dance/movement therapy principles.
Dance/movement therapy may be considered an enactive approach to psychotherapy. Enaction and embodiment are principles that match the theory and practice of dance/movement therapy. They rest on a phenomenological conceptualization of the living body and its fundamental meaning (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), and on an organismic rather than a computational understanding of our human condition (e.g., Lyon, 2006; Smith & Semin, 2004). Phenomenological and enactive theories...