Performing Psychologies offers new perspectives on arts and health, focussing on the different ways in which performance interacting with psychology can enhance understanding of the mind. The book challenges stereotypes of disability, madness and creativity, addressing a range of conditions (autism, dementia and schizophrenia) and performance practices including staged productions and applied work in custodial, health and community settings.Featuring case studies ranging from Hamlet to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the pioneering work of companies such as Spare Tyre and Ridiculusmus, and embracing dance and music as well as theatre and drama, the volume offers new perspectives on the dynamic interactions between performance, psychology and states of mind. It contains contributions from psychologists, performance scholars, therapists and healthcare professionals, who offer multiple perspectives on working through performance-based media. Presenting a richly interdisciplinary and collaborative investigation of the arts in practice, this volume opens up new ways of thinking about the performance of psychologies, and about how psychologies perform.

List of Illustrations Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgements Part 1 Contexts 1 Changing Minds and Minding the Gap: Interactions between Arts and Science Nicola Shaughnessy and Philip Barnard 2 Imagining An/Other: Histories, Theories and Theatres of Mind through the Mirrors of Hamlet Nicola Shaughnessy 3 Paying Attention to Meanings in the Psychological Sciences and the Performing Arts, Philip Barnard Part 2 Interdisciplinary Perspectives 4 Evaluating Atypical Imagination and Cognition: Working in the Arts/Science Interspace, Ilona Roth 5 The Wind and the Rain: Facing Dementia in Lear/Cordelia and The Garden Robert Shaughnessy 6 'Her painful legs joined in the conversation' Dramatherapy and the Space Before and Beyond the Talking CureEmma BrodzinskyPart 3 Practices and Responses7 Where is her Mind? Space, Feminism and Mental Illness in Plays by Sarah Daniels and Sarah KaneChristopher Dingwall-Jones A Response Incomprehensibility and Mutual Recovery Paul Crawford8 A Cry Without an Echo: Consciousness, Creativity and the Healing work of the ArtsEllen W. Kaplan A Response Artistic Healing and the Overcoming of Rehabilitation ParadigmsFabiola Camuti9 Autism and Affect in Post-Realist Theatre, Marla Carlson A Response Scientific Truth, Artistic Licence, Fiction and Reality Thalia R GoldsteinPart 4 Changing Minds10 Reflections on The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland: A conversation between David Woods and Jon Haynes of Ridiculusmus with commentary by Richard Talbot. 11 Re: Creating Psychiatry through Participatory Performance: Playing On Theatre and Mental Health ActsNicola Shaughnessy, Jim Pope, Phil Osment and Hugh Grant-PeterkinEpilogue: Nicola ShaughnessyNotesBibliographyIndex