Description:
This event has been postponed until further notice. Please check back on the KPU Arts Calendar for future updates.
Dr. Sarah Hickinbottom-Brawn, RCC Department of Educational Studies, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
This presentation will share theoretical work produced during a KPU educational leave exploring how the dramatic arts can inform understandings regarding the meaning of therapeutic presence and its cultivation in counselling and psychotherapy students. The concept of therapeutic presence will be examined against an historical overview of ideas about presence in acting from
Diderot to Stanislavski through to contemporary thought in American and British theatre. It will be argued that this history sheds light on issues such as the nature of self, authenticity, emotion, connection and power dynamics that can extend understandings of therapeutic presence and its development. This topic will appeal to students and instructors in counselling and psychotherapy, as well as those interested in theatre studies, philosophy of self, and interdisciplinary studies.