Shakespeare as Prompter

Murray Cox and Alice Theilgaard

ISBN 10: 1853021598 / ISBN 13: 9781853021596

Published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1994

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. Ex library copy with usual stamps & stickers. Seller Inventory # wbs9852098679

Synopsis:

Prompting is the thematic thread that pervades the pages of this book. Its primary connotation is that of the prompter who is urgently called into action, at moments of anxiety, when narrative begins to fail. The central dynamic issue concerns the amending imagination as a prompting resource which, through creativity and the aesthetic imperative, can be invoked in this therapeutic space when the patient - through fear, resistance or distraction - is unable to continue with his story. Psychotherapy can be regarded as a process in which the patient is enabled to do for himself what he cannot do on his own. Shakespeare - as the spokesman for all other poets and dramatists - prompts the therapist in the incessant search for those resonant rhythms and mutative metaphors which augment empathy and make for deeper communication and which also facilitates transference interpretation and resolution. The cadence of the spoken word and the different laminations of silence always call for more finely tuned attentiveness than the therapist, unprompted, can offer. The authors show how Shakespeare can prompt therapeutic engagement with "inaccessible" patients who might otherwise be out of therapeutic reach. At the same time, they demonstrate that the clinical, off-stage world of therapy can also prompt the work of the actor in his on-stage search for representational precision.

About the Author: Murray Cox M.A.F.R.C.Psych.M.Inst.G.A.(Hon) was Consultant Psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital from 1970 to 1997. He edited Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor and Forensic Psychotherapy: Crime Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient (jointly with Christopher Cordess) and wrote Shakespeare as Prompter and Mutative Metaphors in Psychotherapy with Alice Theilgaard, all published by Jessica Kingsley. Alice Theilgaard Dr.Med.Sci. Cand.Psych. Professor of Medical Psychology, The University of Copenhagen. She is Honorary Research Fellow, The Shakespeare Institute, The University of Birmingham.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Shakespeare as Prompter
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good