5.1. Therapy - what it is?
5.2. Healing Relationship

Movie therapy is an independent and separate treatment. It differs from all other art therapy forms (= visual arts, music, literature, dance and drama) but is basically not better or worse.

Of all art therapies movie therapy reminds the most life itself. Movies are part of life, part of reality. For a movie freak like me they are a big part.

5.1. THERAPY - WHAT IT IS?

When we determine concept system called therapy we need to notice those prevalent comprehensions of what is sickness and what is health and what is essence of humanity and all things that have something to do with them.

When we talk about mental health it is not so easy to classify certain condition with positive or negative attributes. The situation or condition we call sickness is very much a cultural and social question and a question of one's attitude. For example: how we define different conditions: do we see possibilities or challenge or hindrance in a problem? Are problems needed or wanted or unwanted if we think about growing as a human being? What kind of reaction to indisposition of society or state is normal, what is abnormal? Is there collective indisposition or is it always a question of individual? We all know that epoch and culture has big effect on what is defined to be good and what is bad. In many cases it is a question of tolerance of symptoms. Who has the authority or influence on what we call sickness and what we call health?

It is quite clear that a person who wants to have some therapy is willing to leave that negative situation one is living in at the moment and is willing to have more desired situation. Often there is a thought that a person can't do it alone or derive advantage from professional help.
A person who is going to therapy believes or hopes that with that therapy or therapist things are going to better direction.
To say it simple: it is a question of ability, desire and need to have some change and to have will power to do so. To have enough power to change the bad, unwanted life to good. Just like in movies: the endless dialectical fight between good and evil.

We may think that in need of therapy there is a question of lack of deficiency of decision, a question of insufficient life handling skills. Person needs professional help or derive advantage from it.

Unsolved problem has two-way effect: solution needs extra energy and on the other hand it burns out more and prevent people to get extra energy.

Help from outside may bring maybe larger vision and more experience to problematic living conditions. Visions and opinions are good start but they don’t resolve problems. For that we need more useful means.

Good creativity and good adaptation help adjusting in different living conditions. Therapy brings new vision and new adaptation and it is always creative.

In movie therapy we improve healing relationship, large vision to humanity and expanding creativity and adaptation. It means: having more and better life handling and problem solving skills. Movie therapy is more than just a traditional therapeutic relationship.

Note: I think that in traditional psychotherapy they trust too much in miraculous words and comprehended sentences.

In movie therapy self-relationship has very important role, because - at the end - in every therapy it’s client who’s making the journey on rocky path and doing the hard work. Good therapist can be, at ones best, like a guide or a coach: encourage in efforts, have functioning visions of possibilities and be able to notice real obstacles.

There are two basic reasons why we can’t solve a problem:
a) The problem is too big or too complicated to be worked out at once
b) Our life handling skills are too insufficient

If a problem is too big it can’t be solved in one piece. We must cut it in smaller pieces and solve them one by one, important pieces first and less important later. People can move mountains if they really want to.

Insufficient life handling skills cause problems, especially in human relationships and managing in every day life activities.

Sometimes our need for help is very narrow, sometimes it is wide.

We can learn human relations in every day life or with the help from some communication form (movies, literature, poetry, music, etc.). We need to practice to be able to face emotions and to express them. If we can’t do it, we are like prisoners in chains: we are not able to use our possibilities.
Therapy is like driving school: we look for and give that preparedness a person needs to start independent learning.
Together we can try to find those basic tools and learn how to use them but after that basic training people have learn to manage on their own.

In movie therapy we use living, moving pictures in a way or another in aware and target-oriented healing use. Therapy means interaction where we try to have positive, wanted, impressive, constructive, healing answer to our problems, difficulties, harms, illness that prevent our good enough life. Therapy means giving and getting, searching something new and adapting with it.

Like in all art therapy in movie therapy movie is just equipment, like a bridge between people, needs and meanings. Movies are a way of communication. Movies don’t have holy force and they don’t make miracles on their own but in good hands they can be very helpful.

5.2. Healing relationship

There is always some important positive, healing relationship in every recovery.

There are no healing words, pictures, movement, sounds etc. itself. What helps is that healing relationship we can touch with words, pictures, movement, sounds etc.

Meaningful relationship depends on intensity and capability to satisfy some important need.

In movie therapy we can use all kinds of movies in therapeutic way; directly or indirectly. It depends on use what kind of a movie we should choose. It is important to notice that no genre is better than others. Question of movies therapeutic affect depend on its capability to answer our needs with healing relationship. All kinds of movies can be very therapeutic. Serious art movies are not more therapeutic than comedy or horror or action or sex movies.

We use in movie therapy movies that can reach out and touch viewer’s needs. Therapeutic experience is more important than artistic enjoyment. Movie that has good and affective therapeutic response is good movie no matter what critics or authorities think.

Like I told earlier: movie therapy is just stepping in children shoes, looking for its foothold. It is one reason why we are thinking and writing more sketches than doctrines with final solution.

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- The End of Chapter Five -

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