Cultural Resilience of DMT
amid the Corporeal Turn of Consumer Culture
Vermes Katalin, PhD
Trainer of Psychodynamic Movement and Dance Therapy.
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Physical Education.
vermes@tf.hu
1. Introduction:
The therapeutic process of Dance Movement Therapy generates threefold
effects regarding resilience.
It is able to promote the resilience of the person, the resilience of the
community and the resilience of the culture alike. Here we confine ourselves
to the third one: cultural resilience of DMT.
Cultural resilience refers to a culture's primordial capacity to maintain and
develop it’s cultural identity. Despite challenges, difficulties, contradictions
and traumas, a resilient culture is capable of maintaining and developing
itself.
What has dance movement therapy to do with cultural resilience?
Western culture suffers from an immemorial cultural wound of dualistic
thinking; separating the mind and the body, uprooting man from corporeity
and from integration with nature. This cultural wound is still in need of heeling
(Sheets-Johnstone 2009), devaluation and alienation of the living body
causes enormous frustration and suffering to this day.
Building cultural resilience requires the formation of a new model of
personality, and a re-creation of body-mind integration in both theory and in
practice. This cultural integration continually occurs in DMT practice: while it
improves personal resilience mobilizing the body’s resources to recover from
psychopathology, trauma and stress, it also dissolves rigid cultural patterns
of split personality, building a new, resilient culture of integrated and
sustainable development.
2. Aims and objectives:
 Our aim here is to present the main points of cultural resilience which
DMT is able to promote.
 First we must delineate how DMT builds cultural resilience through
dissolving cultural patterns of body mind dualisms.
 Therefore we shall sketch how DMT is embedded into the dynamics of
consumer culture, which shows a growing interest in bodily and emotional
well-being, and puts therapeutic- and body-work into the ambivalent role
of cultural compensation.
 We make the case, that cultural resilience of DMT also means a reflection
of this cultural dynamic, and assigns us the task to transform the
malignant consumer regression to the body benign; furthermore, it makes
benign the malignant cultural resilience of consumer culture.
 Finally, we will illustrate how Hungarian psychodynamic movement and
dance therapists work in “Civil Group Process”, attempting to heal the
injuries done to the Hungarian democratic culture and building this way
cultural resilience.
3. Method:
In any scientific approach there are two potential methodologies which can be used: a
theoretical, and an empirical approach. This poster attempts a theoretical analysis of
what cultural resilience of DMT means in light of contemporary culture theoretical,
psychoanalytical and phenomenological critiques.
After theoretical analyses of DMT’s complex cultural situation and of the ambivalent
meaning of resilience which is present in contemporary consumer culture, we derive
theoretical conclusions about cultural resilience built by DMT.
In the end we shall illustrate our theoretical conclusions by offering a Hungarian
example.
Description:
4. Dualistic heritage and cultural resilience built by DMT
Western Culture inherited two forms of body-mind dualism: Platonic-
Christian and Cartesian dualism.
Platonic-Christian dualism quality of finitude, crime and shame
associated with corporeity opposing and subordinating it to a ’higher’ reality
of the infinite and divine soul. Platonic tradition taught to despise the body
and the living world, casting them as mere obstacles to spiritual
development. (Plumwood 1993)
Cartesian dualism which originated in the philosophy of Descartes (1596 –
1650) determines the modern model of personality and scientific thinking up
into the present day. It opposed “cogito”, or individual consciousness as the
very essence of personality to the external world: the body, nature and other
people. The latters are mere objects of scientific thinking, so we have to
control them. Through its Cartesian legacy, the body was consistently
presented as a secondary part of humanity, as a machine, a mere
instrument of a powerful mind. (Sheets-Johnstone 2009, 2) This attitude
reveals itself in several ways: such as doping in sport, excessive
medicalization of the body, and as other alienated and mechanic usages of
corporeity.
DMT has the capacity to release us from the destructive cultural
inheritances of dualism like a traditional sense of guilt and shame
surrounding corporeity, or an alienated and depersonalized,
mechanistic use of body.
Restoring a harmonic relation to our bodily self, realizing our personal
existence in our movement, sensing that never ending intersensory and
intercorporeal attunement by which we are embedded in nature and in
society (Vermes 2011, Burns 2014); DMT, to a certain extent, liberates us
from the dreariness of the body-mind dualism.
Being nurtured by our vital energies, we can overcome difficulties and
troubles easier, so, there is little doubt we become more resilient.
5. Corporeal turn of consumer culture
However, the cultural role DMT plays in present culture is much more
complex.
In postmodern consumer culture, therapies of the body have gained an
extraordinary, yet precarious significance:
a ‘corporeal turn’ is taking place.
“The body has come of age: not only is it permissible ( one might even say
that it is popular nowadays) to be a body, but much time, energy, and
money are being invested in it, all the way from T’ai Chi to massage parlors
and then some.” (Sheets-Johnstone 2009, 17).
The body offers a new form of identity in an age in which traditional and
communal forms of identities have collapsed (Featherstone 1982).
Preoccupation with fitness and wellness, piercing and tattoo, Paleolithic diet,
yoga and others are symptoms of this special cultural dynamics. Excessive
care of the body’s well-being and fitness signals a narcissistic obsession
with corporeity (Lasch 1978).
Hungarian Association for Movement and Dance Therapy
6. Therapeutic Turn of Consumer Culture
However, corporeal turn goes hand in hand with a therapeutic turn (Rieff 1966, Furedi
2004). In the last decades, emotional wellbeing became the other Narcissistic centre of
consumer culture. As Christopher Lasch argued:
“Against a backdrop of Western consumerism and the fragmentation of the nuclear
family, people have lost the capacity for attachment and meaningful object relations.
Instead, they have become insecure, anxious and narcissistic and overly preoccupied
with superficial appearance and the performance of self”. (Lasch 1978, cited in Yates,
2011,65)
Therapy culture, therapeutic language and practices have expanded into everyday life.
(Furedi 2004,1) According to critical theories ‘therapeutic’ preoccupation with the self
goes back to the development of mass consumer capitalism.
“Consumers are searching for ‘intense emotional experience’ in order to compensate for
the growing sense of alienation and homogeneity related to the anomie of mass society
(Andrejevic,2004,144)”
With the help of therapy culture, political and social problems have become
individualized and reduced to the status of personal emotions. Excessive
preoccupation with personal emotions and body-feelings can become an “escape” and a
“compensation” for unsolved cultural and social problems. Therapy culture as a
compensation does not diminish, but rather, increases the cultural and social crisis.
Discussion and results
7. DMT and malign regression of Consumer Culture
DMT represents both corporeal and therapeutic activity; consequently
it is substantially exposed to the ambivalent dynamics of the
corporeal and therapeutic turn of culture.
The strength of consumer culture resides in its capacity to express
corporeal desires as had not been expressed before the appearance of
consumerism, but at the same time it puts bodily desires into such an
intrumentalized, commercialized form that it makes their realization
impossible. (Featherstone 1982)
Consumer culture’s growing interest in bodily and emotional well-
being works, on one hand, as a process of emancipation; on the other
hand, however, it functions as a compensation for heavy cultural
losses: for the deflation of communal and spiritual values capable of
superseding individual feelings (Yates 2011).
While the rising popularity of bodily and therapeutic culture can be
understood as a cultural recovery from the Cartesian split of
modernity, it can also be interpreted as a kind of cultural defense
mechanism or malignant regression.
Terms of malignant and benign regression were introduced by Michael
Bálint (1959).
Malignant regression is pathogenic, returns to an early demanding,
greedy, destructive, envious state, people are demanding active
gratification of their wishes.
Benign regression is minor, temporary, and reversible, regression to the
early state of the soul facilitates real change and development.
Regression to the bodily and emotional wellbeing which narcissistic
consumer society demands from us is unquestioningly a malignant
form of regression.
DMT is able to turn malignant cultural regression benign!
DMT’s central therapeutic element is also the bodily regression: focusing on
the living, moving, sensing, understanding body is the first step towards the
integration of bodily self-senses into the whole personal development. The
body-mind integration through movement delivers delight and energy in the
DMT group, which strengthens the therapeutic process in harder time.
But consumer culture’s malignant regression to the body also shows
itself in DMT processes.
It takes on several forms, for example:
• Excessive demand or greediness of immediate satisfaction,
• Idealization/ devaluation of body-work, or of the group itself,
• Devaluation of the verbal working through and the outside world,
• Denial of painful and shameful body-feelings (ageing, defenselessness,
finitude …)
• And others.
Since these symptoms express a mixture of cultural and personal
regression, therapists have to reflect on both.
They have to help the group to dissolve gradually excessive demands,
idealization and devaluation, and enable participants to contain their fears
and anxieties, to integrate painful and shameful body-feelings.
Doing so, DMT performs two therapeutic functions: personal and cultural.
If DMT works on narcissistic obsession of the body by consumer
culture it becomes capable of turning malignant cultural regression
benign, and to develop personal and cultural autonomy.
-8. Ambivalences of the postmodern idea of “resilience”
Postmodern consumer culture demands from individuals a high level
resilience: an ability to fit themselves in a changing world without excessive trauma.
They should conform to the changing institutions, changing situations, changing
personal relations, changing ideas, and changing authorities while keeping up their
emotional and corporeal well-being.
Postmodern value of resilience is an ambivalent idea, it has both malignant and
benign aspects. Resilience became current in an epoch of “just-in-time capitalism”
when long lasting human relations, long term creative processes and long life
commitments seem to be out of date. The idealization of “resilience” flourishes in an
era of fragmentation when the ever changing “protean self” has come of age (Jay
1999).
Malignant resilience diminishes individuals’ autonomy and responsibility for
enduring values and communities, and makes them able to accommodate anything
which happens to come, maintaining their overall wellbeing.
People, who are “resilient” in this way lose their autonomy and become
exposed to the manipulation of different political or economic authorities.
Benign resilience involves not only just-in-time flexibility, but a long term capacity
for renewing individual and communal values. It presupposes a long term
understanding of what is valuable and what is not; what is worth saving, what is not.
We can see how building benign cultural resilience by DMT requires cultural reflexivity.
Literature
• Andrejevic, Mark (2004) Reality TV: The work of being watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Speeches/DH_122375, accessed 4 January, 2011.
• Balint, Michael (1959). Thrills and Regressions. New York: International Universities Press.
• Burn, Cheryl Amelia (2012): Embodiment and embedment: integrating dance/movement therapy, body psychotherapy,
and ecopsychology. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy Vol. 7, No. 1, February 2012, 39–54
• József Attila (2001): Without hope. In: Morgan, Edwin (transleter): Sixty Poems. Mariscat Press, Glasgow
• Featherstone, Mike(1982): Body in Consumer Culture. Theory, Culture & Society September 1982 vol. 1 no. 2 18-33
• Furedi, Frank (2004): Therapy Culture. London, Routledge.
• Lasch, Christopher (1978): The Culture of Narcissism ( New York: W. W. Norton, Lifton, Robert Jay (1999): The Protean
Self. Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. New York: Basic Books.
Conclusions:
8. Cultural resilience built by DMT
 DMT has the capacity of building resilience by liberating people
from the rigid cultural patterns of body-mind dualisms, releasing
and reintegrating their vital forces.
 But in the ambivalent age of “corporeal” and “therapeutic turn”
regression to the body feelings - a central element of DMT - is
overwhelmed by the cultural dynamics of a postmodern consumer
society. Cultural resilience of DMT means to take up this challenge
as well.
 Reflection on cultural dynamics helps dance movement therapists
to transform cultural regression to body feelings into a real
development based on the body−mind integration, dissolving
cultural idealization and Narcissistic obsession of the body, and
thus changing malignant cultural regression benign.
 Whereupon the cultural function of DMT is more a creation of new
cultural patterns than a mere compensation for cultural alienation.
By the way of cultural self-reflection, DMT strengthens its own
resources to take cultural responsibility and to build cultural
resilience.
9. Hungarian example
Civil Group Project. “Democracy and Me : Within and Around”
The Hungarian Association for Movement and Dance Therapy (HAMDT) committed
itself to the „Civil Group Project” organized by The Hungarian Association for Group
Psychotherapy.
„The Civil Group Project … aims to introduce the experience of the methods currently
used by group psychotherapy in Hungary to the “civil” sphere and make them
applicable on the social scale. Our general aim is the development of social
cooperation, the culture of democratic thinking and behavior.”
The Civil Group Project was founded as a reaction to grievous problems of civil life and
democratic culture in Hungary. In the last decades, society has become extremely
divided: a gap has widened between the different groups and layers of society in all
senses - economic, sociological, political and emotional. Even fundamental common
values have become shaky in the last decades.
Psychodynamic movement and dance therapy and Civil Group Project
On Civil Group Weekends in 2012, 2013 and 2014 the Hungarian psychodynamic
movement and dance therapists (PMDT) also worked on the application of their method
to “civil” situations (the author of this poster included).
The focus of these special “Civil” PMDT groups was not so much the personal
psychotherapeutic work, but the special process of group dynamics participants
displayed through their movement, spontaneous bodily attunement, expression
and verbal conversation.
In the course of the Civil Group Weekend - which consisted of small, medium and
large groups - group-dynamics emerged, similar to those in society at large:
splitting mechanism, acting out, devaluation, idealization, wishful thinking, passive
aggression, projections, introjection, etc.
Dealing with group dynamics was a difficult job for the therapists, being themselves
included in the same social and cultural dynamics as the participants.
In every Civil Group Weekend the PMDT group – one of the small groups - became
an object of idealization by participants.
Body-work and movement seemed to them to be a much more honest, friendly and
undisguised way of self-expression and intersubjective communication than verbal
group work. The PMDT group represented a “safe place”, a “shelter” in the dangerous
and restless ocean of civil life. This regression was a natural reaction to the hard
dynamics of social problems.
PMDT group leaders had complex jobs related to idealization:
• First they had to use the benign part of regression to the body to strengthen group-
confidence and self-confidence as a source of further therapeutic work.
 Then they had to help the group to dissolve idealization and to become able to
notice and integrate the other part as well: those body-feelings, movement-qualities
and dynamics which are sometimes painful or shameful but they are often felt in
group situations and in society.
Consequently, the group began to realize that painful social dynamics work at
the level of body-feelings and movements too, and that PMDT is not an escape
from the ugly world, but the contrary,
PMDT enables people to notice and understand the flesh and blood dynamics
they create in group situations, and in social life.
In this way psychodynamic movement and dance therapy ceases to be an
escape, but an integrant part of the larger community which promotes benign
cultural resilience and democratic culture.
• Plumwood, Val (1993): Platon and Philosophy of Death. In: Val Plumwood: Feminism and Mastery of Nature. London,
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• Rieff, Philipp. (1966): The Triumph of Therapeutic. Chicago, Harper and Row.
• Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. (2009): Corporeal Turn. Exeter, Imprint Academic.
• Vermes Katalin (2011): „Intersensory and intersubjective attunement: Philosophical approach to a central element of
dance movement psychotherapy”, Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, An International Journal for Theory,
Research and Practice. 6(01), pp. 31 – 42.
• Vermes Katalin - Incze Adreinne (2012): Psychodynamic Movement and Dance Therapy (PMDT) in Hungary. Body,
Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, An International Journal for Theory, Research and Practice, 7: 101-114.
• Yates, Candida (2011): Charismatic Therapy Culture and the Seductions of Emotional Well-being. Free Associations:
Psychoanalysis and Culture, Media, Groups, Politics, 62: 59-84.
• Civil Group Project description. http://www.sozialmarie.org/projects/civil_group_weekend_2013.2677.html