ECArTE 2011 in Lucca (Italy) September 24th, 2011
Saturday WS 4.5
Feeling, a subconscious and built-in physical evaluation system,
works in Butoh dance method
Toshiharu Kasai: Professor of Department of Clinical Psychology,
Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University, Japan
The two factors theory of emotion [1] assumes that our emotions/feelings are determined by a combined system of an automatic interpretative process and a responding physical process. As an example, although anger is a pure emotional state, it starts only after a subconscious interpretive process judging that it is an offended situation and he/she has to get angry.
Attribution theory in cognition and derived attribution psychotherapy [2] is based on this understanding, and its practical version has been developed in our Butoh dance method [3]. Feelings and emotions are experienced only in a particular situation, and they are soon shifted because of the attribution process when several basic body-mind factors are changed or affected, converting the anger to sorrow or repentance, etc. The workshop participants will be able to recognize the genuineness of each emotion/feeling and its intelligent responsiveness.
[1] Activated autonomic nervous system unconsciously makes the person seek the reasons in the subconscious mental process, and gives rise to a certain feeling/emotion that is pertinent to the physiological body-mind state and the environmental clues. (Schachter, S. and Singer, J., Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State, Psychological Review, 69, 1962.)
[2] Some people tend to accuse themselves (intra-punitive type), and the others tend to blame everything but him/herself (extra-punitive type) (Rosenzweig, S., The Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration (P-F) Study: Basic manual, 1978).
Attribution psychotherapy turns off his/her original reactions: If you can switch a guilty conscience or self-reproach to an outward attribution, anger arises. If you can find your own faults or sin, you lose reasons to keep angry and feel regret.
[3] By utilizing non-conventional body-mind training methods developed in Butoh, a Japanese avant-garde dance form originated by Tatsumi Hijikata in 1950s, the unconscious attribution process is affected and modulated through altered body-mind states. (Kasai, T. A Butoh Dance Method for Psychosomatic Exploration, Memoir of Hokkaido Institute of Technology, 27, 309-316, 1999)
*Kasai's Butoh Dance Method and other Butoh related papers are available here.
Use the request form at the bottom !
Toshiharu Kasai: Dance therapist certified by Japan Dance Therapy Association (board member), teaching Dance Therapy and Psychological Methodology as Professor at Sapporo Gakuin University, Japan, while giving dance therapy programs at mental clinics. Kasai has been performing as a Butoh dancer around the world for nearly 20 years as Itto Morita of Butoh group "GooSayTen" .
He stayed in UK in 2009 in order to study dance therapy with Professor Helen Payne of University of Hertfordshire, and instructed Butoh related workshops in UK, Holland, Spain, Latvia, and Estonia. His workshop presentation for ECArTE 2009 in London was "Sense of safety and security for creative works nurtured by meditative Butoh dance movements".
Toshiharu Kasai.
* This summary is available [ here] (PDF)
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Activities in UK in 2009 - 2010
I studied dance/movement psychotherapy in U.K. between 2009 May and 2010 March, with Professor Helen Payne, University of Hertfordshire. It was my one year sabbatical, filled with a variety of studies and discoveries, and meeting a various people there and in other countries, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Latvia, and Estonia.
The following website contents are kept for reference of my activities during this period.
If you happen to visit Japan, and are interested in the areas mentioned below, please get in touch with me.
Toshiharu Kasai.
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[Japanese]
