Abstract

We report a DMT project, implemented in a psychiatric day-center and including recurrent social sessions open to several other members of the community. Patients experience a virtuous circle among social participation, self-healing and empowerment. We emphasize, also showing a video sample, the choreographic devices and the methodological cornerstones, highlighting some references to Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies. The Expressive-Relational approach to Dance Movement Therapy (Dmt) works by reintegrating connections: the connections in everyone’s individual body, and the connections in the group, which is a social body. It is the development of such interconnectedness that promotes creativity and that makes everyone’s body image evolve. The Italian psychiatrist and group analyst Franco Fasolo observed (2002) that not the insight, but the outsight is therapeutic for psychotics. As a matter of fact, in our clinical experience, the therapeutic efficacy lies entirely in the sense of belonging and participation, in feeling recognized from the outside and in internalizing this external gaze on oneself. It is the embodied experience of the group’s choreographic process, where the group is the coherent collective body in which each patient recovers her/his own healthy individual body. Reference: B. Dragoni, V. Bellia (2022) L’estetica dell’interconnessione. Cuecm Catania