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Rehearsals! for Growth: Enhancing Family Well-Being Through Dramatic Play

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Promoting Psychological Well-Being in Children and Families
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Abstract

Rehearsals! for Growth (RfG) is an application of theatre improvisation (improv) techniques to psychotherapy of relationships, principally families. RfG provides therapists with a powerful resource to address three broad tasks in the successful therapy of families: (1) altering the affective climate during therapy sessions to inject playfulness and instil hope; (2) broadening the range of displayed social identities and expressive behaviours that members present to other; and (3) changing recurrent yet dysfunctional transactional patterns among its members. RfG is not in itself a comprehensive method of therapy but rather an approach that can be combined with other modalities, providing tools for enhancing the effectiveness of family therapy.

Improv[isation] does not constitute an escape from reality but rather permission to create and explore new realities, to experience imagined truth as present truth.

(Daniel J. Wiener, 2009, p. 358)

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© 2015 Daniel J. Wiener

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Wiener, D.J. (2015). Rehearsals! for Growth: Enhancing Family Well-Being Through Dramatic Play. In: Kirkcaldy, B. (eds) Promoting Psychological Well-Being in Children and Families. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137479969_15

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