BEING MOVED IN THE MODEL OF EMBODIED AESTHETICS

The Model

The model of embodied aesthetics helps to explain how and what works in creative arts therapies. It is based on the model of embodied aflectivity (Fuchs & Koch, 2014). The model of embodied aesthetics was conceived because cognitive sciences models on aesthetics were all concerned exclusively with the perceptive side of the aesthetic experience (Koch, 2017). Cognitive science models are thus only of partial use for disciplines that work with active art-making, such as all CATs and particularly DMT, where there are no receptive techniques explicitly described

Figure 7.2 Model of Embodied Aesthetics Source. Koch, 2017.

yet. It thus was necessary to model the active art-making side in addition to the receptive side of the aesthetic experience (see Figure 7.2). The active side strengthens the clients’ self-efficacy.

The core of the model is the ongoing process of impression (being moved: the working on affect, and being affected, the sensory side) and expression (moving: the moving out from the body and expressing, the motor side). Impression is inner movement, expression is outer movement, and in fact the body is at the same time subject and object, active and passive (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), moving and being moved (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999; Fuchs & Koch, 2014; LaBarre, 2005).³ In creative arts therapies, the persons creating art are expressing some meaning related to their thinking and feeling, and this expression is feeding back into their thinking and feeling. There is a circularity in the process of art-making with a constant interchange between expression and impression, moving and being moved, closely related to how emotion and affect create a circle in the model of embodied affectivity (Fuchs & Koch, 2014). Figure 7.2 shows this assumed process and displays major active factors of CATs that now can be anchored in the model of embodied aesthetics, either on the active (moving) side or on the receptive (sensing) side of the circular process.

In the model of embodied aesthetics, being moved is conceptualized as (a) the ground for other more distinct emotions (in dialectic relation with moving), and (b) the intertwined counterpart (receptive or sensory side) to moving and emoting as the circular dynamic of the model. Here, being moved is in a broad sense conceptualized as “being affected”. The therapy process is based on the dialectics of moving and being moved in order to initiate the desired change (Caldwell, 2018; Fuchs & Koch, 2014; Koch, 2017).

In dance movement therapy, this dialectic is particularly pure insofar as it is not mediated by music, art object, or text, it is the moving body—“naked” in its emoting and being affected—that speaks. Movement is also particularly volatile in that it changes from moment to moment and after each moment is gone. In our research lab, we have started to investigate active factors of DMT, with first empirical results available (see Appendix B).

Implications for Future Research

With respect to future research on being moved, it would be interesting to measure the being moved concept with the Kama Muta scale of Seibt, Schubert, Zickfeld, and Fiske, plus a broader conceptualized being affected concept (Fuchs & Koch, 2014; LaBarre, 2005). This would help to specify the relation of the being moved concept of psychology and aesthetics research with the broader (and healing-related) perspective in dance movement therapy and CATs. Furthermore, the connection of being moved and self-efficacy and the necessary steps in between as hypothesized earlier (see Figure 7.1) need to be investigated in future research.

From the list of aspects implied in being moved—empathic, altruistic, helping, moral behavior—one can assume that being moved not only is important for the client but is particularly so for the therapist, in being a source of the therapist’s professional motivation. It would thus make sense to examine the degree to which the therapist reaches the therapeutic goals with the clients, based on the active factor of being moved as a personal and professional resource. This would call for mediation-analysis of being moved as a mediator of the therapist’s effect on reaching the therapeutic goals. It is the therapists’ resource and capacity to be moved by their own art modality (here dance), and their ability to constructively use this being moved, which drives the therapeutic process further. For example, by using aesthetic answering as an arts-based method (Lange et al., 2020). An example for this technique would be: every time a client talks about her hopeless search, the therapists may spontaneously think of the song “I still haven’t found what I am looking for.” In the next therapy session, the therapist could bring the song and suggest to move to it and see what develops. In addition, the therapist may hand a printout of the song lyrics to the client to go into resonance with the text between sessions and possibly bring her own aesthetic answer back. . . . Being moved is a basis of aesthetic resonance and can constructively drive the therapy process.

CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter, being moved has been described as a major active factor of DMT, and a recent emotion concept in social psychology, intercultural studies, and aesthetics research. While the concept of being moved from the theories in psychology and cognitive sciences is slightly narrower (focused on a specific emotion encompassing positively evaluated bodily resonance), DMT/CAT theorizing includes all possible ways of being affected, with an evaluative abstinence and in application is focused on its use in the context of healing. The attachment aspect of the concept of being moved is particularly interesting with regard to health and healing, and has not explicitly been addressed in the theories on being moved. Attachment is a driving force of human motivation with a profound impact on health. It is a relevant factor in any field of therapy, in the work with mental health patients as well as with those affected by medical illnesses.

A second major concept of enactive healing environments is the experienced self-efficacy of the clients which is connected to the active art-making side. Self-efficacy beliefs are strengthened in the resource-oriented active art-making modalities of CATs and DMT. The crucial point for our clients, as pointed out throughout the chapter, is to carry the being moved into action (authentic expression), to find access to the bodily correlates and work with them, until integration, action completion,¹ mastery, and closure are reached. This is possible in movement per se, on the nonverbal level, which is a chance for many clients who’s preference is not to work with words or who cannot work with words. This is the beauty of all CATs.

For DMT, research on being moved brings preliminary good news: The process of being moved by movement presumably connects experiencing beauty with the strengthening of self-efficacy. The patients learn that they can create the conditions that let them be moved and make them experience beauty and in this way can contribute to their own health and healing.

NOTES

• 1. Resonance: e.g., synchronizing with another person on one or more levels.
• 2. Next to being an active factor of DMT and CATs, beingmovedcan also be a treatment goal, e.g., for clients with depression, autism, schizophrenia, dementia, or psychopathy.
• 3. This “ambiguity” is owed to the fact the body is the only object in the world that we perceive both from the inside and the outside.
• 4. Symbolic self-completion in the arts medium is an important active factor worth investigation in future studies.