The complex intersection of education and therapy in the drama therapy classroom

Drama therapy education presents unique complexities for educators. Within the classroom, students engage with the techniques of their profession in order to learn how to utilize them with clients. However, because drama therapy is designed to work through metaphor, to subvert defenses and often to indirectly arrive at client issues, it is unavoidable that students in these classrooms will have experiences that evoke their own personal affective material. The presence of the students' personal material can serve to deepen learning but it can also blur the line between education and therapy and detract from the intended lessons. This phenomenological study sought to answer the question: What is the lived experience of drama therapy students in these experiential learning processes that evoke and utilize their personal affective material?