Theater and Therapy: How Improvisation Informs the Analytic Hour

Abstract

There are compelling parallels between the creative and spontaneous moments that occur in the therapeutic encounter and in a two-person dramatic improvisation found in theater training. Both involve the imaginative and creative collaboration of the participants and both involve the mutual responsiveness of storyteller and listener. This view establishes a place within the analytic frame for the improvisational nature of the psychoanalytic experience as described by Stern et al. (1998).

An understanding of the process of theatrical improvisation will further inform psychoanalytic practice by enhancing the analyst's repertoire of responsiveness. This contention, already established in the developmental and psychoanalytic literature, is supported further by the work of the distinguished theater director and acting teacher, Sanford Meisner (personal communication, 1966).

Notes

¹A version of this vignette and of the following paragraph has been previously published (Chaplin Kindler, 2005). Rosalind Chaplin Kindler is the Director, Faculty and Supervisor at the Toronto Child Psychoanalytic Program, and Registered Supervisor with the National Association for Drama Therapy.

²The improvisational process that informs our thinking can be taught. Both authors, who have in the past had one or both feet in the world of theater and drama, have lead workshops demonstrating their ideas and introducing the improvisational experience to psychoanalysts.

³This expression of the aesthetic dimensions of the psychoanalytic process is discussed at length by Press and Hagman (this issue).