Dan Skili (London Bridge)

• As well as a therapist I am a registered Clinical Supervisor and offer supervision to all professionals who work in the health and caring professions which could be counsellors, therapists, nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers or care workers.
• I teach Introduction to Dramatherapy at the established City Literary Institute in Covent Garden throughout the year. I previously worked at ‘Studio Upstairs’ - the arts community with a therapeutic concern for 8 years, where I facilitated the Psycho-therapeutic Performance Group in a mental health setting, as well as also supervising students and volunteers.
• I worked extensively with women and men who experience domestic abuse, in the London Borough of Greenwich for ‘Tryangle Project 2011’, where Augusto Boal’s Psych-Educational Forum Theatre (Theatre of the Opressed) is at the heart of the work.
• I regularly facilitate and make use of Forum Theatre, Playback Theatre and Gabriel Roth‘s Five Rhythms, as a part of my Dramatherapy practice; as well as the more traditional ways of working in Dramatherapy, offering our clients talking therapy as well as the option to get out of their chair, in order to in a 3D manner, explore relevant issues through the art form of role-play, drama, movement, voice, story-telling, story-enactment, improvisation, puppetry, drumming, the playing of instruments, drawing and making music - all in relation to what the client is comfortable with.

​Over the years I have very much enjoyed worked closely with Music Therapists, Art Therapists and Dance/Movement Psychotherapists – where I have felt that sharing ways of working with other disciplines, yet related disciplines, and being inspired by them, is not only useful but an essential way of developing one’s own clinical practice.

How I work: (Jungian psychology)

Creative Arts Psychotherapy has its roots in Jungian psychology which starts by recognising the potential in each individual and working toward allowing the person to develop themselves fully. Jungian therapy frequently involves looking at the way that past experiences have affected the individual and the way they continue to prevent us from living fulfilled lives; in other words, Jungian therapy is about ‘removing obstacles’.

Difficulties such as depression or anxiety may result partly from a lack of development of other elements of the personality, such as assertiveness or the willingness to take risks and engage with life; this will, in turn, usually be related to the person’s life experience and family history. Sometimes the issues relate to past or recent trauma or loss, such as sexual or emotional abuse, bereavement, torture, forced emigration or accident, as well as issues related to retirement, divorce, ageing and redundancy.

Alternatively the issues may be about becoming able to ‘be oneself’, where the person can begin to take risks being themselves in a safe environment – issues related to religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, shame and social phobia come in here. Issues with relationships, or the difficulty forming relationships, are also particularly issues I address.. As Jung said, every individual is unique and each therapy will be unique to that individual and that therapist.