Movement psychotherapy in a hospice: Two case studies

Abstract

The following provides a description of how to apply expressive psychotherapy and dance movement therapy in the hospice environment using clinical cases of patients with advanced disease. In the last phase of life, the sensory-perceptual background emerges powerfully in relation to heightened dependency needs. Anxiety in this pre-symbolic mode of generating experience consists of an unspeakable terror of the dissolution of boundedness resulting in some forms of defence and not only in the patient. With this in mind, some hypotheses have emerged on the following: the value of the internal setting understood as the embodied presence of a movement therapist in palliative end-of-life care; the importance of physical holding and handling; the function of a movement therapist on a palliative care team, etc.