Listen Like an Actor: The Key to the Performing Art of Therapy

ABSTRACT

As both a therapist and an actor, O’Connell proposes that: 1) The artforms of acting and psychotherapy share the same core goal: to invite another person to embody a range of their humanity; and 2) Both artforms rely on the same core action to realize that goal – to listen. By listening to clients the way actors listen to their scene partners, O’Connell suggests that clinicians can maximize how we use our most essential instrument for therapeutic engagement: ourselves – particularly in terms of our implicit/nonverbal communication, or “subtext.” He emphasizes that listening like an actor is always the key to performing the art of therapy, no matter what “kind” of therapist we are, and no matter how our “scene work” takes place, (e.g. on “stage” or screen). Anecdotes from both therapy and acting are used to illustrate his ideas.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• implicit communication
• use of self
• multiplicity of self
• improvisation
• acting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Wallace Shawn’s essay “Why I Call Myself a Socialist,” inadvertently but beautifully illustrates Philip Bromberg’s idea of multiplicity of self (Bromberg, 1998) through the lens of acting: “Contrary to the popular misconception, the actor is not necessarily a specialist in imitating or portraying what he knows about other people. On the contrary, the actor may simply be a person who’s more willing than others to reveal some truths about himself” (Shawn, 2011).

² Of note: Robin Weigert is the descendant of prominent psychoanalysts, including her father, Wolfgang Weigert and her grandmother, Edith Weigert, who wrote about psychotherapy as a creative art (Weigert, 1964).

³ In contrast, a few years later I was told to “butch it up,” by a gay director no less, while rehearsing a production of Romeo & Juliet in which I played Romeo. Fortunately, rather than submit to this director’s anxiety about me “seeming gay,” by trying to force a “masculine” exterior – which would have undermined my function in the play (to be driven by genuine, unadulterated love) – I trusted that in order to stay present with my scene partners, and to organically discover and embody the heightened emotions necessary for the role, I would need to start from exactly where I was, even if my mannerisms defied normative expectations for a man who is in love with a woman (O’Connell, 2019b).

⁴ I demonstrate and explore the concept of actorly subtext in my workshops for therapists. And I highly recommend video feedback as a tool for psychotherapy training programs, similar to how video is used in screen acting classes – which is to help each performing artist to become aware of their instrument and its possibilities. Relatedly, Romanelli, Moran, and Tishby’s research (Romanelli et al., 2019) shows how theatrical improvisational training in particular, can help therapists to be aware of self and other, and make use of our instruments. They specifically note that improv training can help us to “heighten awareness of Beebe and Lachmann’s (2002) three organizing principles of interaction: vocal rhythm, facial mirroring and distress regulation.”

⁵ The “therapy wars,” as it were (Burkman, 2016), could come to an end if psychotherapists of all stripes acknowledged our shared understanding that the therapist’s implicit communication is of primary clinical importance in session. Consider CBT icon Judith Beck’s emphasis on the empathic listening of the therapist – as conveyed through their “tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language” (Beck, 2011, p. 239), a.k.a subtext (Beck, 2011, p. 83) – and how similar it is to the observations of psychodynamically informed clinicians (on the opposite side of the therapy aisle from Beck), such as Beebe’s focus on the use of the therapist’s face (Beebe, 2004), and Jonathan Shedler’s studies which reveal that the individual interactions between each unique pair of scene partners are what most determine the effectiveness of any therapy treatment, regardless of the methods and techniques that are used (Shedler, 2015).

⁶ Psychoanalyst Sheldon Bach might describe this practice as oscillating back and forth between states of subjective awareness and objective self-reflection (Bach, 2016, p. 56; O’Connell, 2019a).

⁷ I’ve written elsewhere about how I first learned this lesson, as a child in a production of The Music Man. While believing I was invisible as I “just listened” to the two leads rehearsing the Marion the Librarian scene, the director called out to me, “Mark, don’t look at them! Pretend to read a book or something … ” I learned in that moment that I’m actively and obviously part of the scene no matter what I do or don’t do (O’Connell, 2019a, 2019b).

⁸ Similarly, Galit Atlas writes: “The freedom to think and to feel even the most disturbing thoughts and painful emotions brings with it the experience of being alive” (Atlas, 2022).

⁹ This work has already begun: For instance, Alexander Technique teacher Betsy Polatin (Polatin, 2013), who works extensively with performing artists – actors in particular – also collaborates with the founder of Somatic Experiencing, Levine (2008) to train therapists in the art of breathing, in order to authentically embody and take ownership of our instruments.

¹⁰ In my book The Performing Art of Therapy (O’Connell, 2019a), and my workshops for therapists, I share actorly exercises and meditations that help us to find a natural impulse to breathe, to use breath to stay present, and to experience a full range of feelings, while having the capacity to engage others at the same time.

¹¹ This phenomenon is what director Peter Brook refers to as the deadly theater (Brook, 1968). As therapists, we can easily find ourselves practicing deadly therapy (O’Connell, 2021), when we emphasize results over rehearsal, product over process.

¹² At these moments, I draw inspiration from great actors who deeply understand that it is through vulnerability that we find our greatest strength: e.g., Viola Davis in the film adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences, for example, who in the character of Rose, allows desperate tears of heartbreak to flood her face as she mightily emancipates herself from the submissive role she has always played with her husband.

¹³ This is not unlike Beebe’s advice for parents in her face-to-face infant studies, to “wait” when they reflexively “loom” over their babies who turn away from them – and who are likely seeking a regulating breath of their own before continuing to play (Dougherty et al., 2016). I’m also reminded here of Corbett’s description of “privacy” as a necessary part of relational presence (Corbett, 2014), which is not necessarily the same thing as disengaging, ending the “scene,” or saying, “No!” to your scene partner. We all need a moment once in a while, don’t we?

¹⁴ Saying “Yes, and … ” or “Yes, but … ” as opposed to “No,” is the first rule of improvisation (Gray, 2015; O’Connell, 2019a; Ringstrom, 2018).

¹⁵ Psychologist Helen Nissen Lie’s research shows that the “most effective” way to engage clients is with “professional self-doubt” (Nissen-Lie et al., 2017), as opposed to certainty. And breathing like an actor, helps us to embrace our self-doubt, so that we can find unforeseen possibilities.

¹⁶ This quote reminds me of theater director Peter Brook’s statement that the “greatest aid” for an actor or a therapist is “naivete” (Brook, 1994).

¹⁷ This reminds me of both Loewald, Ringstrom, and Gray’s thinking on dramatic repetition in therapy, and how it can introduce openings for healing and new possibilities if something “novel” enters the dynamic, through the improvisation between scene partners (Gray, 2015; Loewald, 1975; Ringstrom, 2018).

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Mark O’Connell

Mark O’Connell, LCSW-R, MFA, is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City. He’s the author of the books The Performing Art of Therapy: Acting Insights and Techniques for Clinicians and Modern Brides & Modern Grooms, as well as numerous articles about the art of using our most essential instrument for engagement: our selves. He also teaches workshops for therapists and offers clinical supervision. For more information visit markoconnelltherapist.com and theperformingartoftherapy.com.