Drama, Creativity and Intersubjectivity

Salvo Pitruzzella is a pioneer of dramatherapy in Italy. He has worked in many fields, including mental health, education and community care, and founded the first training course at the Centro ArtiTerapie, Lecco in 1998. He has published works in numerous areas, including dramatherapy, educational drama, storymaking, creativity, and theatre, and has edited the first Italian unabridged version of William Blake’s last poem Vala, or The Four Zoas.

'Salvo Pitruzzella takes us on a journey to discover a new dramatic model. He eloquently describes how we can loosen the bonds that freeze the system, experiment with rearranging and reforming that will lead us to discover new meanings by nurturing empathy and creativity. He draws on many sources including literature and theatre, especially the theatre of Pirandello, to arrive at a new destination of the human dramatic condition. This book is profound in its depth, erudition and originality.' - Dr Sue Jennings, President, Romanian Play Therapy and Dramatherapy Association, Honorary Fellow, University of Roehampton'This much awaited reflection on the paradigms underlying the use of drama and theatre in therapeutic contexts is an essential companion for dramatherapy and creative arts therapy scholars, practitioners, and students. Using a generous dose of his charming storytelling tools, blended with a profound philosophical thinking, Salvo Pitruzzella takes us on an intellectual adventure, in which ideas seemingly belonging to unrelated worlds are artfully assembled and presented as deeply connected constellations. Pitruzzella has been cooking this exquisite book for years; we delight in the ripe insight of his thoughts, as he takes us from his beloved Sicily to Old Rome, Ancient Greece, America, or India; from alchemy to Buddhism, from intersubjectivity to neuroscience. Like in any good journey, we come back enriched and inspired – and somehow also transformed.' - Susana Pendzik, PhD, RDT'In his new book, Salvo Pitruzzella presents a vast scholarly landscape of the still emerging field of dramatherapy. Drawing from the ideas of literary mentors, especially Pirandello, and critical observers of society and culture, Pitruzzella argues for a revision of the humanistic paradigm of a singular and whole self. As in my own ideas in role theory, he highlights the complexity and multiplicity of identity. Like Phil Jones, who has crystallized the many extant aspects of the drama therapeutic process, Pitruzzella ends his discussion with a compelling model of drama therapy theory and practice. I encourage all dramatherapists and scholars of the human condition to carefully read this deeply engaging book.' - Robert J. Landy, Ph.D., RDT-BCT, LCAT, Professor of Educational Theatre and Applied Psychology, Director, Drama Therapy Program.'This is a ground breaking and wonderfully thought-provoking book, providing a rich and exciting journey through many disciplines...This book illuminates and celebrates complexity and draws the reader into its thinking on identity, development, culture and change. I particularly valued the ways in which dialogues with the works of Pirandello launch a series of inspiring analyses of the self, other, ‘reality’ and drama to arrive at a ‘dramatic model’ of personhood. The reader of this book will find themselves in a thinking space meeting at one moment Greek myths, another latest insights from neuroscience; turning from developmental psychology to intersubjectivity to Renaissance alchemy or from Blake’s ideas about time to play in childhood.' - Professor Phil Jones, University College London, Institute of Education. Author of Drama As Therapy and The Arts Therapies

• Acknowledgements   Introduction   1. Identity and otherness   2.  Beyond identity: the Intersubjective perspective  3. Creativity and person-making  4. Re-visioning the dramatic paradigm  5. A dramatic model of personhood  6. Imagination and mirroring in Dramatherapy   Conclusions. Steps to a new conceptual framework for Dramatherapy  Bibliography  Index