Intercultural Dramatherapy: Imagination and Action at the Intersections of Difference

The first overarching work on dramatherapy intercultural practice and research, this book explores the therapeutic encounter between therapists and participants as an intercultural space, highlighting how attending to cultural differences informs care.

Drawing on international voices of practitioners and participants, each chapter seeks to explore how social and political struggles, such as rising global conservatism, nationalism, climate crisis, increasing displacement and the coronavirus pandemic, are experienced in dramatherapy. Main themes covered include the development of intercultural good practice guidelines, therapist transparency – especially through self-disclosure and transference issues for the therapist – and the negotiation of power relationships across identity differences. The book concludes with a section on recommendations for training, supervision and practice.

A resource from which new practice and research can emerge, this book will be valuable to dramatherapy educators, practitioners and students, specifically those interested in intercultural practice.

Ditty Dokter, PhD, has worked clinically in adult and young people’s mental health and refugee care. Academically she led two masters programmes in dramatherapy and one in dance movement therapy. Her research and publications focus on intercultural arts therapies practice, training and research.

Nisha Sajnani, PhD, RDT-BCT, is the director of the graduate programme in dramatherapy and the theatre and health lab at New York University. Her body of work explores the unique ways in which aesthetic experience can inspire care, equity and collective human flourishing across the lifespan.