Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth. (Oscar Wilde)
Masks have a long history in society and culture, used in performance, ritual, teaching and as objects of art. In dramatherapy masks can be used as a therapeutic tool, both in individual sessions and in groups. Through the mask the client becomes ‘a spectator of his own fears and hopes, which embodied in and through the mask become more manageable or more meaningful’ (Massanari, 2000, p. 282).
Working one-on-one with masks has advantages and disadvantages for the client. Mask-work can be very intensive and working one-on-one means that the client can have distance through the mask, and also individual attention that can be very productive when getting to the heart of some difficult issues. Working individually also gives the client more time to work on different masks or parts of their identity through the mask-work. Another benefit is that clients also have the opportunity to build rapport and trust with the therapist through creating a self-mask together, which is a mould of the client’s face. When working without a group to interact with the mask can also become an object to project onto and interact with, which is a further benefit to working with masks in individual dramatherapy work.
However, there are disadvantages to working one-on-one with masks in dramatherapy. The primary one is that the client does not have witnesses (other than the therapist) to work through the process of creating the mask, rehearsing and then performing with it. The client also does not have a group to share experiences and resonate with. When embodying the mask, the client does not have other people to work with in role-plays or improvisations. Without the benefit and experience of working in a group the mask-work may not have the same meaning or therapeutic advantages.
There are many advantages of working with masks when working one-on-one with individual clients. Individual client-work can present a challenge when working with very sensitive or difficult issues when the work itself does not provide any distance for the client. Working with masks can provide distance and with it create a safer environment for the client and therapist to work. The distance is provided through the mask symbolising or ‘taking on’ the difficult issue of the client preventing them from having too close a relationship with the issue until they are ready. The client can work through a process with the mask such as talking to the mask, having the mask interact with another mask or placing the mask in a landscape or other visual art piece long before they embody the mask, allowing more under-distancing.
Along with providing distance for the client, doing mask-work can be very intensive and get to the heart of a client’s issues quite quickly. In her article The Use of the Mask in Psychotherapy Janzing quotes theatre director Peter Brook as stating that ‘work with the mask carries with it a special danger…masks really radiate power’ (Janzing, 1998, p.155). As a result, working one-on-one with masks is a real advantage as the client and therapist can focus on the client’s processing of difficult issues in a very concentrated way, without having to divide the time of the session amongst other clients. Mask work can be very revealing for a client, as suggested by Copeau who stated that ‘the mask is a means of allowing the individual to hide behind their own reality and thus transform beyond their own inhibitions’ (Roy, 2016, p. 7). As such working with masks therapeutically can be demanding and difficult work, which will only be enhanced by having the therapist’s undivided attention and support.
Further to the benefit of having individual attention while doing mask work, the other advantage of working with masks one-on-one is that the client has more time to lead into working with the mask. Even with individual attention working with masks is an area of dramatherapy that should not move faster than the client is ready to go. Masks can be multi-layered and often symbolise and represent various aspects of ourselves. French Dramatherapist Breitenbach works with children using make-up and face painting as masks. She believes that ‘we all have varied conflictual desires and impulses, no one of each is obviously the key to all the rest…many children will create a whole series of faces exploring contradictory moods, different ideas and new artistic effects’ (Breitenbach, 1979, p. 20). As a result, it benefits the client working with masks to have the time to work through the different layers and their different ‘faces’ which is made more possible when working one-on-one.
References
Breitenbach, N. (1979) Secret Faces, Dramatherapy, Vol. 3, No. 2: 18-23.
Dunn-Snow, P. and Joy-Smellie, S. (2000) Teaching Art Therapy Techniques: Mask-making, A Case in Point, Art Therapy, Vol. 17, No. 2: 125-131.
Janzing, H. (1998) The Use of the Mask in Psychotherapy, The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 25, No. 3: 151-157.
Jennings, S. (1987) Dramatherapy: Symbolic Structure Symbolic Process, Dramatherapy, Vol. 10, No. 2: 3-7.
Jones, P. (1991) Dramatherapy: Five Core Processes, Dramatherapy, Vol. 14, No. 1: 8-15.
Massanari, R. (2000) Seeing (through) masks: An exploration of masks and mask making, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 3: 279-294.
Roy, D. (2016) Masks as a Method: Meyerhold to Mnouchkine, Cogent Arts and Humanities, Vol. 3, No. 1236436: 1-11.
Trepal-Wollenzier, H. and Wester, K. (2002) The Use of Masks in Counseling, Journal of Clinical Activities, Assignments and Handouts in Psychotherapy Practice, Vol. 2, No. 2: 123-130.
Walker, M., Kaimal, G., Gonzaga, A., Myers-Coffman, K. and DeGraba, T. (2017) Active-duty military service members’ visual representations of PTSD and TBI in masks, International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, Vol. 12, No. 1: 1-12.
