Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT)

Dance/Movement Therapy is the psychotherapeutic use of movement to foster the emotional, cognitive, physical and social integration of the person. Born of the encounter between American modern dance and hospital psychiatry in search of non-verbal mediations, it first treated chronic psychotic patients inaccessible to speech, through the circle, shared rhythm, bodily mirroring and amplification of gesture. It rests on the principle of psychosomatic unity, rooted in the phenomenology of the lived body and embodied cognition. It encompasses currents such as Authentic Movement (the mover/witness pair, eyes closed) arising from Jungian active imagination.

This therapy is covered in detail (principles, indications, protocol, level of evidence) in Volume 6 of the Mémento des Psychothérapies. See the volume.