ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a brief dramatherapeutic intervention with a client with chronic catatonic schizophrenia. Benedetti describes the psychopathology and psychodynamics of schizophrenia in an impressive way. His description of the autistic tendencies of persons suffering from schizophrenia is especially interesting for the discussion. The schizophrenic person often feels omnipotent, whereas the feelings of omnipotence are paired with those of powerlessness. The chapter shows how ritual, storytelling, music and different objects were used to create containers and a context within which the client could discover the transitional space of play, and thus transform ‘passive withdrawal’ into ‘creative distance’. Dramatherapy, like drama itself, is an arrangement of forms–roles, conventions, contrasts, similarities, modes of understanding, ideas and feelings–which encourages to discriminate between, and choose among, a range of different kinds of perception or ways of perceiving. Drama and dramatherapy can support and promote the ego-building process of identification and differentiation.
