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Thesis
Understanding the Personal Meaning of the Metaphor, "Body as Home" for Application in Dance/Movement Therapy
Master of Arts (M.A.), Drexel University
Sep 2012
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-4293
Abstract
Within the last three decades, environmental psychologists, sociologists and psychologists have described "home" as a safe haven or sanctuary, in which one experiences positive qualities such as security, privacy, belonging and comfort and develops a healthier sense of self. Problematically though, many individuals do not experience home as such, and as a result may instead feel despair, failure and terror. Yet, despite not experiencing home in the universal way, we all still have a sense of home as an archetypal image. Because a "sense" is mentally constructed, and somatically felt, the researcher began to consider the value of an individual accepting "my body as my home, or my home as my body". The researcher's intention is to explore how an individual can create a home within the body, specifically within clinical dance/movement therapy. Application potentially applies to several clinical populations such as survivors of body trauma (ie: sexual and physical abuse), those with chronic pain, former eating disorders patients, people who self-mutilate or enact self-harm, recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, the homeless, foster care children, soldiers, and those who have been displaced or are in transition due to job loss. Three adult participants, artists in their own rights, engaged in artistic inquiry through improvisational processes in movement, and in their own respective art modalities, to explore the research question, "what is your subjective meaning of the metaphor 'body is home'?". Three themes were crystallized as the final results, and are synthesized into this new definition of "body as home": a socio-culturally constructed concept of self, dynamically developed, in an intersubjective process, that supports a holistic and authentic habitation in the body. The significance of these final results, is summarized into four key implications. First, exploring "body as home" within a dance/movement therapy clinical context could be an opportunity to construct a healthy attachment relationship due to the inter-personal themes that emerged, and the theory that the mother is a child's initial home. Secondly, the results highlight a potential gap in the definition of "embodiment" with regards to inhabiting body with a range of presence and authenticity. Third, they demonstrate that exploration of the metaphor "body as home" can directly affect one's body-image. And lastly, the clinical application of "body as home" could encourage development of a healthier body-image and more authentic, comfortable embodiment of self in relationship to others and environment.
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Details
- Title
- Understanding the Personal Meaning of the Metaphor, "Body as Home" for Application in Dance/Movement Therapy
- Creators
- Lindsay Meeks - DU
- Contributors
- Ellen Schelly Hill (Advisor) - Drexel University (1970-)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Arts (M.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Creative Arts Therapies; College of Nursing and Health Professions; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 4293; 991014632162704721