Abbie at Play!: Accessing Inner Voices: Successful Use of Puppet Therapy with Adults

Friday, November 7, 2008

Accessing Inner Voices: Successful Use of Puppet Therapy with Adults

This amazing post by Joanne Vizzini, Ph.D, LCPC, NCC, on her website, A cc essing I nner Voices, shows the inifinite potential of the creative arts in helping us all to access our inner self.

From Joanne Vizinni's Creative Arts Puppet Therapy:

"The experience of puppet therapy with adults has successfully provided a means to disarm client’s resistance in a quick and easy fashion. There seems to be a regression in the service of the ego which facilitates adult play.

The ability to quickly unmask one’s defenses allows the adult to reach core issues. Childhood issues and feelings can resurface readily. The therapeutic image of offering a hand up and out is germane in puppet therapy where the client’s healing is literally at the counselor’s fingertips. The puppets have allowed many of the clients with whom I have worked the freedom to disarm defenses. They become free to face their pain and joy as never before. Steinhardt (1994), a follower of Winnicott, concluded that puppets allow spontaneous symbolic emotional expression, which otherwise may not occur, within a protected framework. (p.205).

The experience of puppet therapy as described by my clients is innately spiritual. They cite a transformative factor as part of their experience. Amorin and Calvacante state, ".... we believe that within the play element dwells an ulterior meaning, something experienced as magical or transporting which surrounds the concreteness of play itself" (1992, p.153). As puppet therapy with adults unfolds, I sense the touch of the sacred. Inner voices are accessed. I remain in awe of the healing I have witnessed as a puppet therapist."

Although I myself have used puppetry in therapy with children, I feel I haven't yet really maximized its potentials. Here, Ms. Vizinni shares with us how it has worked magic even with adults!

Some of Dr. Vizzini's client's comments on the experience:

When the puppet began to speak to me, I felt like I could tell her anything.
I learned that I am okay as I am. Just like the puppet, I’m free to be me.
I am able to access a piece of myself that I wasn’t able to touch; I’ll never have to hide again.

(ps. the puppet pictured here is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/stacymorsels/501261201/)

1 comment:

Ashley KateJuly 15, 2011 at 10:18 PM
I just wrote a blog about using puppets in the classroom :o)

http://explore-education.blogspot.com/2011/07/emotions-bag.html

I am glad I came across this entry! Thanks for sharing :o)

Ashley Kate
http://expore-education.blogspot.com
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

The Inner Self Communicates With Us Through Our Art

"For a person who works improvisationally most of the time, it may surprise you to know that art for me is about visual communication. The odd thing is that the communication is first and foremost from my heart to me. It's my inner, hidden self which speaks through the work of my hands.
The less I try to control the outcome; the less I fuss with "getting it right," the less I'm concerned about making art, the more of my truth is revealed. And when my truth comes out in the open, conveyed in my beadwork, I feel a great sense of wholeness, connection, and satisfaction."

--- Robin Atkins, bead artist

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say. Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express. Everybody is original, if she tells the truth, if she speaks from herself. But it must be from her true self and not the self she thinks she should be.

So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing....

-Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

The Voyage to a Place Inside Oneself

For a voyage to a destination, wherever it may be, is also a voyage inside oneself; even as a cyclone carries along with it the center in which it must ultimately come to rest.

At these moments I think not only of the places I have been to but also of the distances I have traveled within myself without a friend or ship; and of the long way yet to go before I come home within myself and within the journey.

And always when the curtains are lifted, the night is without, peering in steadily and constantly, with the light of the stars far beyond.

- Laurens van der Post, Venture to the Interior

Brother of the Sun and of Time

Let me hold your story
and fill my hands
with new sensations
that I've never seen before
which have never existed
which I couldn't have understood
without your song.
They bear your name
and trace out a road.
Let me take with me
a piece of our time together
and savour the warmth
a friend leaves behind.

Brother of the sun and of time
who cares what colour the wind is?
We are joined by the taste of a
dream.
Of being hand in hand
holding
a small piece,
a bit of a world
where you are allowed
to walk at your own pace,
to feel what you feel
and, although different,
to sing your own song

Let me take your conscience
and leave taking with me
the certainty
that although we are different
we're alike
That the heart beats
to the same beat
but your form
creates a new rhythm
Let me learn your music
and enrich my world
with the look of your eyes
and to find in your soul
a new home.

Brother of the sun and of time
who cares what colour the wind is?
We are joined by the taste of a
dream.

--- song by Margarita Boom
(see related post, A Beautiful Song of Friendship)