As a parish minister and a chartered counseling psychologist, author Dr. Roger Grainger works in the secular world every day. His clients dont come to him for religious advice, so, despite his background as a Christian priest, he must talk to them in everyday language. Even so, many of the points he makes are relevant in both secular and faith-based contexts. Faith, Hope, and Therapy: Counseling with St. Paul is based upon his work with a number of his clients. Among them are Andrea, a woman who is deeply unhappy because she doesnt know who she is; Dale, who feels he has no purpose in life; Mrs. Ingram, unable to handle bereavement; and Daniel, unable to live up to his fathers expectations. Each client has a unique story and the need for therapy to discover their true paths in life. Grainger demonstrates how his faith was both informed and illuminated by these encounters. Even when his clients take him by surprise, he learns from them because he recognizes that only by acting as a real human being, with his own faults and foibles, and not as an impeccable professional clothed in a mantle of objectivity, can he truly be a professional. Through these stories, he seeks to offer models to anyone seeking to change his or her way of doing things.
This is a book for people who believe in God. Whatever religion we belong to, or whatever branch of whatever religion, just believing in God is enough to differentiate us from those who dont. Not necessarily any better, but different. In a secular world, we who believe ought not to concentrate on the things we disagree about but on this one most important thing that we have in common. And in any case, Gods saving love is contagious, which means it spreads out far beyond the barriers we erect in order to try to keep him to ourselves. We may search for alternative things to worship, but there is no real substitute. Now is the time to face facts. Do we believe in God? Whether or not we do is crucial!
This book is about experiences of personal chaos and their relationship to creativity. It presents evidence that creativity emerges where it seems totally unlikely, in things and places which are not usually associated with it: catastrophe, utter hopelessness and desperation, grief and depression, social oppression and injustice, failure and boredom. All these are chaotically disruptive of what we usually call 'quality of life'. In fact, they are different kinds of chaos, which represents the effective reversal of human meanings, thus bringing home the limitations of simple theorising. In this book the author concentrates on ways in which chaos impels us to make new kinds of sense of life, and to start living in a world which we experience as authentically different from whatever went before. This is chaos as a sustaining presence which is essential for life as it alone permits real change to take place.
This book looks at the way theatre works in order to make 'space for living'. It provides the means to help one feel more deeply, think more clearly, relate more personally, by giving audiences and actors the opportunity to rehearse their roles within a setting which is imagined, but to make use of feelings and thoughts which are real. This book extends the territory explored by Peter Brook in The Empty Space. It adds a new psychological dimension: recognising that not only do we ourselves make space for theatre, but it is also true that theatre makes space for us -- a 'space for living'. Roger Grainger looks in turn at the different kinds of space theatre creates, using written sources and the spoken testimony of actors and members of the audience. The author's own discoveries as a professional actor give passion and immediacy to the acting/audience participation opportunities these insights provide. Based on genuine experience of, and love for, the theatre, this book does not present plays solely as literature but as particular kinds of theatrical experience. In so doing the author breaks new ground in theatre studies and provides actors and audience with tools that promote 'hands-on' knowledge and experience of the human value of drama and theatre.
Writing from a dramatherapist's perspective, Roger Grainger looks at methods of researching the arts therapies, and how particular definitions of research affect our understanding and practising of arts therapies. He places approaches to research in four categories: quantitative research (which seeks to demonstrate), qualitative research (which explains by describing), action research (which explains by experiencing) and art-based research (which aims to document in an appropriate language, in this case art). Grainger evaluates all of these approaches, arguing that our theoretical or philosophical understanding of what research actually is has an effect on what we think research can be used for. Grainger argues that research always involves a trade-off between two kinds of inaccuracy, numerical and experiential, which correspond to the imprecise fit of the way we think about life and life itself. A range of research paradigms is useful because each regards the world in a different way. Taken together they provide a range of ways of increasing our understanding.
The book examines the various ways in which theatre responds to our psychological needs. It begins with how we present our own personal drama and goes on to look at theatre as the means by which we give events personal and corporate significance. Theatre enables us to overcome our reluctance to face psychological pain and so helps us towards healing, concentrating on its balance of protection and exposure-its principal contribution to health and its significance for human relationship.
Historically speaking, religious ritual and theatre appear to have evolved together. But what is the relationship between catharsis and liturgy? How liturgical is theatre, and how theatrical is liturgy? This book explores the characteristics of liturgical experience - concentration, single mindedness, intentionality, and emotional catharsis.
Shakespeare's plays present the dynamics of personal relationships in a way that is direct and unambiguous, and with unparalleled forcefulness. This book concentrates on three of Shakespeare's last plays, King Lear, Pericles and The Tempest, allowing them to demonstrate the underlying dynamic of theatre as it is embodied within the work of a master craftsman. The three plays are widely dissimilar from one another at the surface level, yet they all concentrate on a particular relationship - that between fathers and daughters - working outwards from the centre of human experience and using the fundamental relational paradigm as it is enshrined in theatre, especially Shakespeare's. As a professional actor as well as an academic, the author combines an actor's understanding with psychodynamics and literary criticism.
Group spirituality is an increasingly popular area of focus, and working in groups raises some very different and valuable consequences which wouldn't necessarily arise in a one-to-one encounter. In Group Spirituality, Roger Grainger, an author already established as an authority on Drama therapy, provides a functional guide to group spirituality and workshops. Derived from the authors' experiences of working with groups of people interested in exploring their own and other people's spirituality, Group Spirituality turns an abstract idea into a practical and recognizable experience. The nature of group work, the embodiment of ideas and feelings, and circumstances aiding personal encounter are discussed. Workshop examples aimed at establishing group identity and the introduction of the idea of the 'safe place' are explained. The symbolism of spiritual awareness is approached, and a firm distinction between spirituality and religion is made. Group Spirituality's approach to spirituality from a workshop focus, successfully attempts to embody spirituality and provide a framework for consciously examining and integrating spirituality within the rest of our life.
From a master biographer and longtime Gurdjieff practitioner, a brilliant new exploration of the quintessential Western esoteric teacher of the twentieth-century. The Greek-Armenian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the most original and provocative spiritual teachers in the twentieth-century West. Whereas much work on Gurdjieff has been either fawning or blindly critical, acclaimed scholar and writer Lipsey balances sympathetic interest in Gurdjieff and his "Fourth Way" teachings with a historian's sense of context and a biographer's feel for personality and relationships. Using a wide range of published and unpublished sources, Lipsey explores Gurdjieff's formative travels in Central Asia, his famed teaching institution in France, the development of the Gurdjieff Movements and music, and, above all, Gurdjieff's fascinating continuous evolution as a teacher. Published on the 70th anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, Gurdjieff Reconsidered delves deeply into Gurdjieff's writings and those of his most important students, including P. D. Ouspensky and Jeanne de Salzmann. Lipsey's comprehensive approach and unerring sense of the subject make this a must-read for anyone with a serious intention to explore Gurdjieff's life, teachings, and reputation.
Description This book is about the way in which the idea of madness still haunts people's imagination, and the way in which this is reflected in the experience of those diagnosed as psychiatrically ill. It is also about the difference between the old system of psychiatric containment and the present 'community' approach which deals with 'users of the psychiatric services' - in other words, User Groups - as this is seen from the perspective of those involved in both of these approaches. The result is a book which has much to say about social exclusion and the experience of stigma. It sets out to examine how this important social change, from 'patient' to 'user' affects those most intimately concerned. It puts the 'user' point of view in a positive way, allowing those within the community to speak for themselves. It also has something to say about the similarity which exists between incarceration within an institution and confinement to a special section of society as a whole. About the AuthorRoger Grainger has himself been a psychiatric in-patient and the member of several user groups. He worked for eighteen years as a whole-time Chaplain of a large psychiatric hospital in the North of England, and is now in private practice as a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Senior Practitioner in Psychotherapy. He believes himself to be in a privileged position to write on this subject, and 'Laying the Ghost' follows two other books in the area, 'Watching for Wings' (1979) and 'Strangers in the pews' (1993)
The Drama of the Rite brings home the dramatic identity of ritual and the religious significance of all kinds of theatre. Historically speaking, religious ritual and theatre appear to have evolved together. But what is the relationship between catharsis and liturgy? How liturgical is theatre and how theatrical is liturgy? Liturgy's purpose is dramatic; like theatre, it is a kinetic medium focusing upon the presence of the other person, whether divine or human. This book explores the characteristics of liturgical experience - concentration, single mindedness, intentionality, emotional catharsis, and, above all, the quality of encounter on which personal environment depends. It is an exploration which leads into the dramatic shape underlying both liturgy and theatre, that of the rite of passage itself. Examples are given of such rites, understood from the point of view of their theatrical nature and purpose. This involves looking at liturgical structure from a point of view which, up to now, has largely been neglected by scholars, although its relevance emerges with striking force, as the drama of the incursion of the divine into human lives. Many have spoken and written of the 'drama of religious ritual' and been content to leave it at that. Roger Grainger takes a clich ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (c) and examines the often misunderstood truth it expresses.
This new edition of Roger Money-Kyrle's classic work is published together with three of his late papers, 'Cognitive development', 'The aim of psychoanalysis', and 'On being a psychoanalyst'. Its intention is to introduce new readers to this key Kleinian thinker, whose influence has been quiet and uncontroversial but deep and formative. The book also includes Donald Meltzer's discussion of the paper on 'Cognitive development'.
The book describes two experiences of life within a large English psychiatric hospitalthe first as a patient and the second as a member of staff; the first in the 1950s, before these hospitals opened their gates, the second at the end of their lives, when their main task was rehabilitation rather than incarnation. The author compares these two situations, focusing on the last gasps of institutional life, as seen from the point of view of the hospital chaplain.
1. From saftey to saftey: The shampe of the dramatherapy session 2. Changing social behaviour: Task-applied dramatherapy 3. The creative-expressive mode: Dramatherapy and role 4. Self-disclosure and disguise: Dramatherapy and mask 5. Into and out of chaos: Dramatherapy and the symbolisation of life-changes 6. What does it all mean? Dramatherapy and the interpretation of life 7. Making sense of the past: Dramatherapy and story 8. Bringing words to life: Dramatherapy and text 9. Assessment and evaluation: How can we tell if dramatherapy is or has been effective?
This study examines the underlying theatrical underpinning of dramatherapy, which is firmly based on an understanding of processes which are fundamentally theatrical. It approaches the subject systematically, arguing that the hidden psychological mechanisms which make theatre work are the same as those which operate in dramatherapy.
Christians are often disturbed by secularisation. The author, a social psychologist, analyses why this is the case. This encouraging text highlights the opportunities which secular society offers to the church and invites Christians to engage with it on love.
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