Search results for ""Author Roger Grainger""

Shakespeare’s plays present the dynamics of personal relationships in a way that is direct and unambiguous, and with unparalleled forcefulness. This book concentrates on three of Shakespeare’s last plays, King Lear, Pericles and The Tempest, allowing them to demonstrate the underlying dynamic of theatre as it is embodied within the work of a master craftsman. The three plays are widely dissimilar from one another at the surface level, yet they all concentrate on a particular relationship – that between fathers and daughters – working outwards from the centre of human experience and using the fundamental relational paradigm as it is enshrined in theatre, especially Shakespeare’s. As a professional actor as well as an academic, the author combines an actor’s understanding with psychodynamics and literary criticism.

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Writing from a dramatherapist's perspective, Roger Grainger looks at methods of researching the arts therapies, and how particular definitions of research affect our understanding and practising of arts therapies. He places approaches to research in four categories: quantitative research (which seeks to demonstrate), qualitative research (which explains by describing), action research (which explains by experiencing) and art-based research (which aims to document in an appropriate language, in this case art). Grainger evaluates all of these approaches, arguing that our theoretical or philosophical understanding of what research actually is has an effect on what we think research can be used for.Grainger argues that research always involves a trade-off between two kinds of inaccuracy, numerical and experiential, which correspond to the imprecise fit of the way we think about life and life itself. A range of research paradigms is useful because each regards the world in a different way. Taken together they provide a range of ways of increasing our understanding.

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Religions contribute to wars, but they can also contribute to peace. They are its necessary foundation. Here eight different religions join together in peace to pray for peace. Under the auspices of the interfaith organization, The Week of Prayer for World Peace, they bring home vividly the love that is God and the horror that is war. It is not only inner peace - tranquility of soul and mind - which is being sought here, but an end to agony and bloodshed, physical and psychological torture, abuse of every kind taking place in the world of men, women and children. This is a very practical prayer book, earthed in the pain of being human. Peace itself comes in many different forms, and the book is arranged to be flexible and comprehensive, ideal for individual or group use. It consists of seven weeks of prayer, each of which contains eight "days" of prayers and intercessions on particular themes connected with the overall theme of "Peace on earth and goodwill towards mankind".

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This book would appeal to professionals and practitioners in the field of bereavement care, particularly funeral practices. In the presence of much that is so meaningless through grief, this book provides a meaningful overview, perhaps with new insights and perspectives, and is as such highly recommended.'- The Compassionate Friends Newsletter UK'Discusses research in the field of art therapy, the forms of research available in the field, and the ways in which definitions of research affect understanding of the arts therapies and how they are practised. In his introductory chapter, the author outlines the importance of research into the arts therapies and explains that, while the rest of the book focuses primarily on research into drama therapy , his observations are applicable to other forms of art therapy. He describes the characteristics of art therapy and how these affect the types of research that can be carried out in the field... The author addresses questions relating to research by practicing art therapists, the investigative processes open to them, and the necessary differences between the approaches they take and those of traditional academic research. He proposes an art-based form of research, which uses art as both the means of interpreting art and of presenting that interpretation.'- ARTbibliographies ModernIn The Social Symbolism of Grief and Mourning Roger Grainger focuses on the role of funerals in promoting the personal and social adjustment of the bereaved. The work explores the significance of many of the areas and stages connected with death, with chapters covering such topics as:* attitudes towards death* our fear of death and dying* ways in which we attempt to come to terms with death* the rituals that surround these processes.By tying together folklore and traditional beliefs with actual funeral practices, both ancient and modern, the author has created a work that examines the anthropological, psychological and superstitious aspects of our relationship to death and dying.'Grainger is multi-talented, drawing on his expertise in drama, counselling, acting, theology, sociology and anthropology... He has some interesting things to say about the necessity of chaos, and how this is ritualised in the Irish wake. Unlike many authors on bereavement, Grainger takes seriously the ghost beliefs that are widespread throughout history'- Bereavement Care'The Social Symbolism of Grief and Mourning is a complex study of death from the perspectives of drama, psychology, anthropology, and working pastoral practice. Roger Grainger ties his study to ancient and current funeral practices, and examines the beliefs about death implicit in our social behaviour; but more importantly, he had understood and can communicate, the absurd quality of death and its religious nature. By its very nature, death is paradoxical: it cannot be contained by words or rites, but that is just what we seek to do, must do, to make sense of it. In doing this, we make sense of life. The important bearing on changing funeral practices, but more pressingly on the way we speak and preach (if we do) about death.'- Church Times'Roger Grainger's book is a refreshingly new approach to a wide range of theory and practice regarding attitudes towards death, dying and the dead. Most of the material cited was collected presumably for his PhD in the 1970s and the only major criticism relates to the absence of contributions of contemporary philosophers and commentators such as Foucault, Levinas, Primo Levi and Elias. However, this is more than compensated for by a fresh look at the work of some of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anthropologists as well as eastern works, such as the Tibetan Book Of The Dead … Grainger cites sources which deplore the current state of British funerals and promotes the charter of the National Funeral College. In concluding the book with a chapter entitled The Rite of Passage, he conveys, with good supporting evidence, the importance of sustaining these rites in order to support bereaved people in what can be seen as a mythical experience which is also practical and rooted in reality. I recommend this book not least because of its exhaustive research which provides an excellent resource for any further study in this area.'- Progress in Palliative Care

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This study examines the underlying theatrical underpinning of dramatherapy, which is firmly based on an understanding of processes which are fundamentally theatrical: imagination, identification and catharsis. It approaches the subject systematically, arguing that the hidden psychological mechanisms which make theatre work are the same as those which operate in dramatherapy. In other words, the authors argue, it is the theatricality of dramatherapy which makes it healing.

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