Authentic Movement

Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow

Patrizia Pallaro

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781846429927
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Patrizia Pallaro's second volume of essays on Authentic Movement, eight years after her first, is a tour de force. It is indeed "an extraordinary array of papers", as Pallaro puts it, and an immensely rich, moving and highly readable sweep through the landscapes of Authentic Movement, "this form of creative expression, meditative discipline and/or psychotherapeutic endeavour". You don't need to practice Authentic Movement to get a lot out of this book, but it certainly helps! I defy anyone to read the first two sections and not be curious to have their own experience.'

- Sesame Institute

'Authentic Movement can be seen as a means by which analysts can become more sensitive to unconscious, especially pre-verbal aspects of themselves and their patients.'

- Body Psychotherapy Journal Newsletter

'This book is a collection of articles, some of which are interviews, brought together for the first time. It is very valuable to have them all together in one place...It is a wonderful collection of articles on topics you have always wanted to read, such as the role of transference in dance therapy or Jung and dance therapy. The book also includes scripts for exercises.'

- Somatics

Authentic Movement, an exploration of the unconscious through movement, was largely defined by the work of Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. The basic concepts of Authentic Movement are expressed for the first time in one volume through interviews and conversations with these important figures, and their key papers. They emphasize the importance of movement as a means of communication, particularly unconscious or 'authentic' movement, emerging when the individual has a deep, self-sensing awareness - an attitude of 'inner listening'. Such movement can trigger powerful images, feelings and kinesthetic sensations arising from the depths of our stored childhood memories or connecting our inner selves to the transcendent.

In exploring Authentic Movement these questions are asked:

- How does authentic movement differ from other forms of dance and movement therapy?

- How may 'authentic' movement be experienced?

Joan Chodorow

Joan Chodorow’s Papers

It is thirty-five years now since I began to study with Mary Starks Whitehouse. I was in my mid-twenties and in the midst of the transition from teaching dance to becoming a dance therapist. I was engaged with the inner-directed world of Jungian analysis that had long been central to Mary’s life and work. Inevitably, my experiences with Mary became deeply interwoven with analysis and with my developing practice as a dance therapist. In addition to the profound experience of movement as active imagination I studied each of Mary’s papers as they became available. When I met Janet Adler ten years later, I felt a similar sense of kinship and was deeply impressed with her and inspired by her work and her writings. Janet made essential links between dance therapy and psychotherapy that no one had made before, providing a lens that let me see the richness and strength of Mary’s contribution in even greater depth and differentiation. It is a great honor now to follow the contributions of Mary and Janet as I add my own to the historical works of this volume.

The following essays show the development of many of my ideas over a period of seventeen years, from 1974 to 1991. As I reflect on my writing style, I see that some of my early efforts feel formal and stiff. I offer them now essentially unchanged, with all their imperfections, and trust that the questions they explore remain vital and alive today.

The interview conducted by Nisha Zenoff in 1986 leads all the way back to the love I felt at the age of seven for the moving imagination, first on a trapeze and then in ballet. In ‘Philosophy and Methods of Individual Work in Dance Therapy’, written in 1974, I discussed outer-directed and inner-directed ways of working and tried to show how both are essential aspects of dance therapy practice. ‘Dance Therapy and the Transcendent Function’, written in 1977, is my first attempt to go more deeply into the connection between Jung’s active imagination and the practice of dance therapy. ‘Dance/Movement and Body Experience in Analysis’ (published in 1982 and then revised in 1995) is my first contribution to the Jungian literature, an interweaving of many resources. ‘To Move and be Moved’, written in 1984, presents for the first time my ideas about the origins of expressive movement in the psyche. I discussed the personal unconscious, the cultural unconscious, the primordial unconscious, and the Self, and tried to differentiate the movement themes that emerge. ‘The Body as Symbol’, written in 1986, introduces five symbolic events that seem to reflect certain stages of developing consciousness during the first year and a half of life. All of this material was further developed in my book Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology: The Moving Imagination,published in 1991 by Routledge. In ‘Active Imagination’ (extrapolated from my 1991 book) I tried to show how all the creative arts psychotherapies can trace their roots to Jung’s early contribution. My long and continuing passion for this material led me recently to edit and introduce a volume entitled Jung on Active Imagination,published in 1997 by Princeton University Press.

My analytic practice, teaching and writing continue as a dynamic triad. I am writing a book now about active imagination as a comprehensive method of psychotherapy, based on my understanding of the intrinsic forms of the imagination. I shall work also as editor with Louis Stewart on his opus Affect and Archetype: Foundations of the Psyche.For me, the great gift of authentic movement is to work symbolically with the raw material of the unconscious. As the primal stuff of impulse and image emerge as symbolic physical action, we enter the realm of the imagination in both its wounding and healing aspects. We don’t have to understand the natural healing function of the imagination in order to benefit from it. But the questions are essential as we move toward a deeper understanding of why we work the way we do.

Joan Chodorow
January 1998

CHAPTER 15

An Interview with Joan Chodorow¹

Nancy R. Zenoff

Joan Chodorow is a dance/movement therapist and Jungian analyst practicing in Fairfax, California, a small, peaceful town across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and a member of the Jung Institute of San Francisco. She has been actively involved in dance/movement therapy for the past 24 years.

She studied with Trudi Schoop and Mary Whitehouse in the early 1960s, then received her MA degree in psychology and dance therapy from Goddard College. She was one of the first dance therapists in California and one of the first to be licensed as a marriage, family and child counselor. In 1972 she co-ordinated the first California regional American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) Conference, was elected Vice-President of the American Dance Therapy Association in 1972 and served as its President from 1974 to 1976. She can be seen in the ADTA film Dance therapy: the power of movement.

Joan has made a unique contribution in dance/movement therapy by putting the wordless into words. Since 1971 she has written numerous articles and publications on the philosophy and practice of dance therapy. Two of her early writings – What is dance therapy, really? and Philosophy and methods of individual work in dance therapy– were among the first efforts to build a theory of movement therapy, particularly of individual work. When they appeared, these articles were among the few written teaching materials available. From that beginning she has continued to share in written form the record of her evolving thought, as represented by her articles Dance and body experience in analysis (1982; 1995), To move and be moved (1984), The body as symbol: dance/movement in analysis (1986).

Today, in addition to her private practice, she continues to write, teach and supervise students and therapists. For many years she has been teaching an intensive summer course in Switzerland.

Joan’s enthusiasm, dedication and love of her work are clearly evident as she speaks. As she talks, one senses a subtle non-quite-expressed movement; it seems she could as well dance as speak what she has to say. It is a movement that provides an open space for a person to be and to move with her – in that person’s own way.

Through the years of involvement, Joan retains a freshness, liveliness and curiosity about movement of the human body and about the moving body’s relationship to the psyche. There is always newness to be discovered, to be met with a sense of wonder and joy.

Joan welcomes me to her home with a warm smile and twinkling blue eyes. We meet for the interview in her studio at one end of her home where she sees clients. On a wall near us at one end of an otherwise open expanse of bare hardwood floor are shelves filled to overflowing with sand-tray figures, ready to enter the waiting sand tray. Outside, on a wood-railed balcony, are art supplies for use when talk, sandplay or movement wants to turn into another form of expression.

In this atmosphere of warmth, welcome and choice Joan and I seat ourselves on soft comfortable chairs and begin to talk.

I (NZ):‘Joan, how did the world of dance and movement therapy begin for you?’

JC:‘It began with the world of dance. Like so many of us, dance was the center of my childhood and teen years. As a young adult, I danced; I was a dancer and dance teacher. But what led me to dance therapy was working with pre-school age children. Up to that point, my idea of teaching was to train young dancers. Then my world turned around completely when I was given a group of three-year-olds to work with. I couldn’t teach them any kind of ballet technique. The only way I could learn about how to be with them was to watch them. What I saw was that everything they did was a mirroring of the world in movement: when they saw something, they watched it and imitated it. In that way the children learned about the world through their bodies. It was a revelation for me.

When I started working with those very young children I realized that there was a whole other way of using movement. And that was, to learn about the world and to learn about each other. My imagination opened through these little three-year-olds. Whatever they were interested in was what we did in class. For example, that particular group of children was very interested in bugs. We happened to be in an East L.A. studio that had a lot of bugs in it, so we would look at the bugs and watch the way they walked and try to walk like bugs did. And we also remembered and enacted fairy tales, scenes from nature, family relationships – all the things the children were interested in. We would think of what an older brother or sister is like and how would they move.’

I:‘How did you make the transition from watching the bugs and thinking about the brothers and sisters to where you knew you were doing dance therapy?’

JC:‘It’s just that those years of work with very young children, and their parents and teachers, gave me an understanding of development that’s been essential to every aspect of my work as a dance therapist, verbal psychotherapist and Jungian analyst. Children develop a sense of who they are through symbolic play. As adults, we do the same thing but call it creative imagination. Any in-depth approach to psychotherapy helps us develop a sense of who we are through the imagination. In a sense, active or creative imagination is play – play with images.

All of us have ways of giving form to the imagination, and for some of us it has to be through the body. Some of us imagine best through our bodies. I discovered this when I was about seven – and my father built me a trapeze. It was an ecstatic kind of experience to swing back and forth on that wonderful trapeze under an old cottonwood tree. I would literally wait through the day at school to get home and spend the rest of the afternoon on the trapeze, hanging from my arms, legs, knees – often upside down. When I was moving, I could imagine myself as anything in the world. My imagination opened up when my body was moving; I knew that that was my way into a very special world. I would now call it, perhaps, by different names.’

I:‘By what names?’

JC:‘Relationship of conscious and unconscious or relationship of psyche and soma - that sort of thing. It basically was going into the world of the imagination while at the same time remaining grounded in the world of the body - that is, the world the way it is. For me, it happened most fully through movement, through the body. I started ballet lessons around the same time. My first teacher, also when I was around seven or eight - her name was Jane Denham, a beautiful young dancer - she taught strong technique but, toward the end of each class, she also made time for improvisation. The children formed a magic circle and, one at a time, we’d go into the circle and become anything in the world or we could enter any imaginary landscape or we could be ourselves and interact with any imaginal being. Those moments were what made the dance so wonderful. Did you have something like that?’

I:‘I had the ocean.’

JC:‘I think the trapeze was a way simply to be with myself. Then dance became a way not only to be myself but also to communicate with others through the imagination. Once I began dancing, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I became very focused and committed, as young dancers are. You just devote your whole life to that.’

I:‘Were you a professional dancer?’

JC:‘Yes, I was a professional dancer in my late teens and early twenties. My main ballet teacher was Carmelita Marocci. Carmelita has a kind of passion about the purpose of dance. She taught ballet technique but it was all in the service of expressing powerful images - to touch the heights or depths of human experience. But when I began to get jobs dancing, the jobs that were available around Hollywo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Mary Starks Whitehouse
• Janet Adler
• Joan Chodorow
• Subject Index
• Author Index