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Finding Sameer

Southern

16 Aug 2023

NobleIDark:/48914/w1/20260525/693EAB18DOI10.4324/9781003091783-10

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Abstract

This chapter documents the journey of a young man with severe learning disabilities, and how a two-and-a-half-year dramatherapy intervention supported him to explore, express and understand his emotions, relationships and sense of identity. Having experienced a major trauma earlier in childhood, this client appeared not to have processed nor emotionally developed since this incident. This chapter explores how ten years later, the application of play and creativity in dramatherapy, while giving a safe space for dark fantasies to be enacted, helped the client to express his suppressed rage. This chapter examines how the client progressed from appearing to be stuck, to emotionally developing into an adolescent after being supported to process his grief. It captures the client’s journey into ‘becoming a man’, where exploring his culture, faith, sexuality and gender was central to finding his identity and sense of self. With unresolved bereavement and latterly erotic transference becoming prominent themes in the sessions, this chapter demonstrates how dramatherapy can support opportunities for schools to address sex education for young people with learning disabilities.

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