ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a reflection on the complexities of working while pregnant with a variety of dramatherapy methods, with challenging patients in HMP Holloway. Dramatherapy is inconceivable without acknowledging the body. Dramatherapists use their own bodies in therapy sessions to model and mirror their patients, actively encouraging immersion in the creative process. At HMP Holloway, the health care unit day centre offered arts activities and therapies for female forensic patients with mental health difficulties. The aim of using dramatherapy was to support patients to access their hidden internal worlds and encourage “a safe way to allow the unspeakable to be spoken”. The circle of containment is established pre-birth as the infant is contained within the womb. Exposure to the raw projections of the mother in a volatile environment where mothering is either idealised or perverse, offered a unique opportunity to explore the changes in the therapeutic relationship that are stimulated by pregnancy.
