Dramatherapy to purge pent-up emotions and ailments

By R.S. Karunaratne

Ravindra Ranasingha's Dramatherapy in Sri Lanka will be launched on May 18 at 4 p.m at the National Library Services Board Auditorium, Colombo 7. The author claims it is the first book written on Dramatherapy published in Sri Lanka.

Excerpts of the interview with the author:

Question: Can you explain what dramatherapy is?

Answer: Drama and therapy are very familiar subjects to Sri Lankans. Drama has always been therapeutic. We know that our folk rituals are completely therapeutic. Laughter first, and then comes elimination of ailment through exorcism.

Ravindra Ranasinghe

The native healer or exorcist uses impersonation, improvised dialogues, dance and movement to implement the therapy. Even the modern day drama makes one laugh or be critical. It helps the spectator to purge his pent up emotions or negative thoughts and take decisions for his betterment. He sees the characters on stage and assimilates with their experiences.

In ancient Greece, psychiatrists sent their patients to watch drama, knowing very well that they will be cleansed of their mental disturbances. This is what Aristotle talks of in his Poetics.

Today we help the individual to utilise his imaginative faculty to explore his issues. Sometimes the group enacts the individual's current state of emotions or feelings and then discuss.

The discussion helps the client to have different perspectives towards his issue. These perspectives are then acted out and the most appropriate solutions selected to decide the best course in the client's life.

This is a counselling process that empowers the client to see his current situation and then re-position himself to be his decision maker.

The dramatherapist must be fully equipped with his counselling skills and dramatic tools to avoid re-traumatisation. Those who are in severe trauma are not made to explore the issue immediately. In dramatherapy we have the technique of 'over-distancing' that helps the client to move into a metaphoric world.

They are made to play with their imagination. There are many over-distancing techniques that we employ including the sand-tray and sculpting. Only when the individual is ready to confront his issue, the therapist would work with 'under-distancing' techniques.

Psychodrama and verbatim theatre comes into play at this stage. This process helps the individual to be the author of his own life story.

Theory and practice

Q: What compelled you to write this book?

A: For the past 11 years I have been practising dramatherapy in many parts of the country and being a dramatist in the Sinhala theatre for the past 25 years, it was high time for me to give the world our view of healing. So, the book contains theory and practice of dramatherapy. This knowledge is important for counsellors and therapists including teachers and parents to deal with individuals who are disturbed mentally. Those involved in Special Needs Education will really benefit from this book.

Dramatherapy in progress

As given in the book, I learnt a lot through experience. There were moments that I got stuck when applying the therapy. The theory made only a little contribution but the major part came from the people. Theory alone will not help one to be a dramatherapist.

When travelling to different parts of the country conducting dramatherapy sessions and workshops, I had to learn from the people. There was apparent transformation in me personally and then in practice. It is necessary to have the theory, but the therapist needs to be flexible to make the therapy more practical and amiable. Otherwise people will not have faith on the therapist and his tools.

As a person who studied counselling, dramatherapy, drama, psychotherapy and educational psychology, I make use of all these to support the client. There are compatible as well as incompatible systems and theories that come to help the therapist. We cannot say which one is the best. But broader the outlook of the therapist, his therapy becomes effective.

My practice started in Trincomalee, in 2002. That was the time the peace accord was in force. The children with whom I worked were under severe trauma. I got this invitation and went there to be a residential dramatherapist to work with the children. They taught me a lot.

I had to undo my learning to accommodate the children. First, clinical labelling had to be discarded. In Sri Lanka, you normally don't brand people. I had to look at them in a more humane manner. I was taught to be human. They brought in their cultural beliefs and practices to work with me. First, I was a bit hesitant to accept everything that they brought, but then I realised that culture is a great healer in the Sri Lankan context. If I did not adopt this perspective, I would be a failed therapist. So, that was the first thing I had. Ours is a traditional society and culture has a strong influence on man's mind. Buddhism and Hinduism are closely linked and they have the innate quality of causing therapy.

Conducting therapy in Sri Lanka is not difficult, if the therapist can get the sense of our different cultures. This multi-ethnic, multi-religious structure in the country is a great gift since this diversity provides ample folk stories, songs, games and spiritual practices that the therapist can use in his therapeutic process.

Clinical practice

Q: Can you further elaborate dramatherapy as a clinical practice?

A: Dramatherapy is a clinical practice in the West. But I don't look at it clinically. There are reasons. Human beings are not to be branded. We know that several psychiatrists in the North and South tried to make it a clinical practice, applying dramatherapy on the Tsunami and war victims. But they could not continue. The reason is that they apply drama on the basis of their medical knowledge.

Medical knowledge provides only the sickness or the label. You label your client and then you do not have any new perspective towards the human being. Today, when you go to any hospital, you are labelled. Sri Lankans don't like this. More than that dramatherapy cannot move with that narrow, inhuman thought.

A dramatist is full of love and compassion. He can easily empathise with the other person. It is this empathy that elevates us as beings of light. The Buddha and Jesus Christ spoke of this 'Light'. How many of us realise this inner potential of ours to make others' lives bright?

This is why I call my practice a 'humanist approach'. I discard labels and empower the individual to have a view of himself. If this empowering does not happen, then your counselling or therapy will be a failure. It will not be productive, nor result oriented. Clinical labelling is sheer humiliation. It thrusts the individual in a worse situation. The value of drama is that its supports the individual to act, reflect and experience his inner potential. Sometimes our potentials are dormant and someone needs to show us or help us to make them lively.

The other important factor is that drama deals with emotions, feelings and thoughts. Just think of a child in the classroom. The teacher can go on teaching. But after sometime the children get bored.

Why? The teacher has failed to touch on the emotions of the child. This emotional component is important in the learning process. What we do as dramatherapists is that we help the emotional growth of the individual. Finally, dramatherapy is a learning process; it is learning about life.

Down's syndrome

Q: How do you apply dramatherapy to those with Developmental Disabilities?

A: I have applied dramatherapy to those with Down's syndrome, autism and mental retardation. Their inability to respond appropriately to another is what is visible in them.

This is due to low connectivity of the neuron system. Dramatherapy helps to strengthen the Mirror Neurons. This chemistry should be understood and supported. I see these children as specially gifted and highly talented.

Q: Can you elaborate the strength of culture in bringing about the healing process?

A: As I said earlier, culture is the basis of the human being. He has a language, religion, beliefs and arts. These are the unconscious expressions of man's emotions. The dramatherapist touches on these implements since they provide him with structures to effect the therapy. Culture is nothing but the collective unconscious as Carl Jung says. The belief system helps man to be stable. He is compelled to search for his centre. This is important. We have lost the connection with our Centre, since we are in a rat race. We are decentered and what dramatherapy does is to help man to return to his centre, receiving the joy of being a human being.

The complex conditions in the country have made the people lose their balance. Currently, human relationships have become a power play. Everybody is in their imaginary world. Fame, wealth and power have taken over man's life.

His imaginary world has turned him to a 'mythic being'. The individual sees himself as all powerful. This is too much for him. The power he concentrates in his hands makes others lose all their balance. Those who lose their psychic balance end either in the mental hospital or in prison. They are branded as lunatics or criminals. This is the injustice caused by power play.

Q: How did you develop this perspective about humankind?

A: When you read fairy tales you could find many victims. Novels, short stories and dramas are full of victims. In them, you can see the social dynamics that thrust one to become a victim. When I started to do the theatre adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' (1987), it showed me the dire image of the 'Establishment' as the Americans call it. I call it the system. System makes you a victim. My theatre adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel 'The Trial' (1997) depicted many repressive Systems which includes religion and judiciary.

Today our educational system is repressive. It makes our children commit suicide. They, together with their teachers and parents carry the lunacy of competition. Finally, the whole society has become sick. Doctors cannot diagnose these sicknesses since they emerge not according to the symptoms given in the medical book but from the greedy and competitive lifestyle of ours.

Neo-Marxist

Q: What was the philosophical influence you had to make your dramatherapy practice effective?

A: My readings on Frankfurt School and especially the writings of Walter Benjamin helped me to think differently. He is a neo-Marxist. I have translated his texts 'Author as Producer' and 'Illuminations'.

I read him thoroughly. What I see in him is that he shows that man needs to be his producer. In other words he needs to be his own author. You must not entrust it to any other.

At one time people thought Lenin would be a great writer of their lives. But people themselves removed his statue. People went further and removed the Berlin Wall. These instances show that man wants freedom. Jean Genet, Jean Paul Sartre, Bertolt Brecht, Augusto Boal, Viktor Frankl, Ronald Liang and many others profess this freedom.

Ronald Liang is special, since he, in the 1960s, made a huge impact as a psychologist. His psychiatric practice was completely an upturned one. He did not want psychiatry to be a 'tool' that would suppress or label his clients, but he turned towards 'anti-psychiatry'. He looked at the patients in a broader manner.

He went into the social environment of the person to see the roots of the sickness. This is a very radical move taken by a psychiatrist. How many psychiatrists in Sri Lanka take this humane path?

Very simply, all religions speak of this love and compassion.

Q: What are your current involvements and do you have any intention of starting a National Dramatherapy Institute?

A: Right now I train the trainers of Sunera Foundation on Dramatherapy. A national dramatherapy institute is a need and I am working towards it.

Q: What is your target audience at the book launch?

A: This book caters to counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists, educationists, people involved with Special Needs and parents.

On this day, there will be speeches by specialists in the Mental Health field and those who come to the book launch will benefit by listening and interacting with the speakers.