Toshiharu Kasai - Body Oriented Psychotherapy

Professor Toshiharu Kasai
Department of Clinical Psychology,
Faculty of Humanitied,
Sapporo Gakuin University
Japan



For Body Oriented Psychotherapy:

Professor Kasai has been having dancetherapy programms at mental clinics since 1999 in Sapporo, Japan, as a certified dancetherapist of Japan Dance Therapy Association, and also as a professional Butoh performer with 20 year's Butoh activies.

From the onset of the Butoh dance in 1950s, a Japanese avant-garde dance form originated by Hijikata Tatsumi, there has been a connention between Butoh performance/ideas and schizophrenic mentalities. A member of Sankaijuku, one of the most famous Japanese Butoh dance groups, Toru Iwashita, has been having dancetherapy sessions at a mental clinic for 20 years, and it has been reported that schizophrenic patients with negative syndromes, who had never reacted to other people, started reacting to his movements. I myself has experienced almost the same thing in my dancetherapy programms with schizophrenics.

Because there are differences among schizophrenic mentalities in terms of their bodily perceptions and the way to react to the others and the outside world, it is stll not clear enough about the relationship between Butoh dance/ideas and their schizophrenic mentalities, but here is a tentative working hypnothesis with which I have tried to relate to them:

In Butoh dance, it is often required to open up one's mind so as for the subcouscious elements to invade the consciousness by loosening one's ego boundaries for artistic developments of performance. Such performance often appears to be temporary "artistic" insanity, and a "good Butoh performance".

From the technical point of view, essential creativity of Butoh comes from the negation of a mental function called "objectification": A Butoh performer at some point stops perceiving his body and the world outside in the objectifying way, and hangs himself in between the subject and the object. During the time when the subject - object dichotonomy vanishes, the Butoh performer is in the mental state of nothingness or allness...

It is a very difficult mental state in two meanings: 1)it is not so easy to reach the very mental state, 2) once you enter the mental state, it runs the risk of losing every capacity of thinking, acting as an effective active agent, and it is impossible to protect oneself from invading formidable things, evil and spiritual. It is not the world where ordinary sanity works.
Hijikata Tatsumi, the originator of Butoh, once said "Butoh ... is a dead man standing desperately". Schizophrenic people and the victims of double bind situation (by G. Bateson) might be experiencing this mental state, and struggle to get out of the state by doing non effective counteractions or psychological superstitious behavior that are fated to be void...
I have supposed that this mental transformation from the normal consciouness to the less protective consciousness with loosened ego boundaries may be very similar to schizophrenic mentalities in some points, and Butoh performers, escpecially who have had Butoh dance/ dancetherapy sessions with schizophrenic people, might be able to perceive their mental worlds well and to be able to reach their minds to some extent through "bodily movements". Because the body is the field where the subject object dichotomy rises and disappears dynamically as described above.

"Body Learning Therapy based on Butoh" includes exercises concerning this mental state and the bodily experiences.

Professor Seiji Hanamura of Tokyo Fukushi University, a famous pshchiatrist with ample experiences with schzophrenic patients, is now carrying out a research about the bodily perception, cenesthopathy in Japan, and is interested in having a contact with researchers or psychiatrits who have the similar interest.

"New Understandings of Butoh Creation and Creative Autopoietic Butoh
- From Subconscious Hidden Observer to Perturbation of Body-Mind System"
(tentative title)
Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University 2009 (in press)

*This paper includes descriptions relating to the above discussion, and will be published in a couple of months. Please let me know your email address. I will send the paper (PDF) when available.
For your reference about Butoh dance method by T.Kasai (PDF files):
  • A Butoh Dance Method for Psychosomatic Exploration (1999)
  • A Note on Butoh Body (2000) (including non-objectification)
  • Perception in Butoh Dance (2003)
  • Arm-Standing Exercise for Psychosomatic Training (2005)


    • Related materials:

    Professor Helen Payne, University of Herfordshire, one of the leading figures of UK dance/movement psychotherpay, has worked with Professor Frank Roricht who has published the following papers about cenesthesia and cenesthopathy as follows:
    (These papers were offered by Professor Roricht)
    Toshiharu Kasai is a visiting researcher in University of Hertfordshire:

    (C/O) Professor Helen Payne,
    303 Meridian House,32 The Common, Hatfield,
    Herts AL10 0NZ, UK


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