A CIRCLE WITHOUT BEGINNING, WITHOUT END

Dance/movement therapists seeking to collaborate with survivors from collectivist cultures of the global South in their effort to heal from the horrors of war and organized violence may draw meaningfully from an existential appraisal of DMT’s foundational art form. As the foregoing observations on dance, understood inclusively, in the Kailahun District may attest, the art form’s ephemerality may not so much impede as inspire the interplay and ultimate integration of memory in its implicit and explicit dimensions. The fact that dance’s transitory character is not something that the participants in the DMT processes documented in this chapter would have identified explicitly does not make the form’s implicit linkage to human impermanence any the less resonant on the unconscious level. To the contrary, as paradoxical as it may appear, coping in dance with unconscious reminders of human mortality seems to spur movement, animate achievement and interconnectedness, and generally build capacity for surviving. The growth evidenced among the former boy combatants and other DMT participants so deeply affected by their unimaginable losses during Sierra Leone’s 11-year war may well have been informed in part by dance’s distinctive evanescence: by the mystery that, in so many ways, people cannot help but find in dancing an embodiment of their lives as finite creatures with aspirations toward the infinite.

NOTES

• 1. Used with permission of University of California Press, from Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Craig Owens (1992, p. 117); permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. [Note: Gilles Deleuze published the original in 1968 as Différence et répétition.]
• 2. Pseudonyms are applied to protect confidentiality.

REFERENCES

Berger, M. (1972). Bodily experience and expression of emotion. Writings on Body Movement and Communication, 2, 191-230.

Bcrrol, C. F. (2006). Neuroscience meets dance/movement therapy: Mirror neurons, the therapeutic process and empathy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 33, 302 315.

Bracken, P. J., & Petty, C. (Eds.). (1998). Rethinking the trauma of war. New York: Free Association Books.

Brenner, C. (1973). An elementary textbook of psychoanalysis. New York: Doubleday.

Cage, J. (1961). Silence: Lectures and writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Csiksentmihaliyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Damasio, A. (1991). Somatic markers and the guidance of behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.

Freud, S. (1958). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 12, pp. 215-226). London: The Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1911).

Harris, D. A. (2002). Mobilizing to empower and restore: Dance/movement therapy with children affected by war and organized violence (Unpublished master's thesis). Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

Harris, D. A. (2007a). Dance/movement therapy approaches to fostering resilience and recovery among African adolescent torture survivors. Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and Prevention of Torture, 17{J), 134-155.

Harris, D. A. (2007b). Pathways to embodied empathy and reconciliation: Former boy soldiers in a dance/ movement therapy group in Sierra Leone. Intervention: International Journal of Mental Health, Psychosocial Work and Counselling in Areas of Armed Conflict, 5(3), 203-231.

Harris, D. A. (2009). The paradox of expressing speechless terror. Ritual liminality in the creative arts therapies' treatment of posttraumatic distress. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 56(2), 94 104.

Harris, D. A. (2010). When child soldiers reconcile: Accountability, restorative justice, and the renewal of empathy. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2(3), 334-354.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books.

Ogden, P, Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Owens, C. (1992). Beyond recognition: Representation, power, and culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 117.

Peddle, N., Moneiro, C., Guluma, V, & Macaulay, T. E. A. (1999). Trauma, loss, and resilience in Africa: A psychosocial community based approach to culturally sensitive healing. In K. Nader & N. Dubrow (Eds.), Honoring differences: Cultural issues in the treatment of trauma and loss (pp. 121 149). Philadelphia: Brunner/ Mazel, Inc.

Schmais, C. (1974). Dance therapy in perspective. In Focus on Dance, 7 (pp. 7 12). Washington, DC: AAHPER.

Stark, L. (2006). Cleansing the wounds of war: An examination of traditional healing, psychosocial health and reintegration in Sierra Leone. Intervention: The International Journal of Mental Health, Psychosocial Hbrk and Counselling in Areas of Armed Conflict, 4(3), 206-218.

Turner, V (1977a). Frame, flow; and reflection: Ritual and drama as public liminality. In M. Benamou & C. Caramello (Eds.), Performance in postmodern culture (pp. 33-55). Madison, WI: Coda Press, Inc.

Turner, V 11977b). 7 he ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

UNICEF. (2000). Retrieved from www.unicef.org/

United Nations. (2019). International day in support of victims of torture. Retrieved from ww'w.un.org/cn/events/ torturevictimsday/

van der Kolk, B. A. (1996). The complexity of adaptation to trauma: Self-regulation, stimulus discrimination, and characterological development. In B. A. Van der Kolk & A. C. McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth (Eds.), Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society (pp. 182 213). New York: The Guilford Press.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking. Winnicott, D W. (1971). Playing and reality. New'York: Routledge.

Yalom, I. 1). 11970). 7he theory and practice of group psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.