Dance/Movement Therapy for Infants and Young Children with Medical Illness

Integrating their shared experiences, the authors, Miri Kiren as an infant psychiatrist and Suzi Tortora as a dance/movement therapist, have put together an extraordinarily valuable text focused on the impact of serious medical illnesses on the development of very young children. Particularly important is the emphasis throughout the book on how very young children's development, both healthy and/or dysfunctional, is fundamentally shaped by non-verbally based physiological, sensory-motor, and affective interchanges between infants and their caregivers, interchanges that are internalized and become deeply embodied in the child's psyche. Building on this fundamental aspect of early development, the authors provide detailed descriptions of the mechanisms underlying young children's vulnerability to medical procedures and the potential immediate and long-term effects, the ways in which parents and medical personnel can help to reduce these potential traumatic effects, and rich descriptions of clinically effective non-verbal dance-movement techniques involving both child and caregiver. This richness of material will apply not only in work with seriously ill young children but with any young child who has experienced trauma. A special treat for every reader, not just those who work with the medically ill but any caregiver of very young children, will be the tables and appendices that describe the huge range of nonverbally based observations that caregivers can utilize to read young children's physical, mental, and emotional states. Theodore Gaensbauer, MD tgaensbauer@comcast.net Clinical Professor, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Aurora, Colorado. Drs. Tortora and Keren offer a very accessible volume here, contributing to the maturation of medical dance/movement therapy (DMT) with specialized applications for this population. The authors' vivid descriptions of clinical sessions are a fabulous introduction to DMT for the reader unfamiliar with this mind-body integrated creative arts therapy discipline. Professional clinicians and graduate students will get close-up insights to how seasoned, intuitive, and expert therapists go about this sensitive, essential work on a moment-to-moment basis. Educators will appreciate how each well-referenced chapter can stand on its own. Theoretically rooted in development, trauma, embodiment, intersubjectivity, and regulation theories and research, integrated with practical models for pediatrics and DMT, the book exemplifies the interdisciplinarity that potentiates all medical DMT and indeed, all good health care delivery. Sherry Goodill, Ph.D., BC-DMT, NCC, LPC sg35@drexel.edu Clinical Professor, Department of Creative Arts Therapies, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University To begin to understand how significant illness affects infants and children is quite daunting - this work by Dr. Tortora and Dr. Keren is excellent in exploring the intersection of experience and development with the added important insight of how dance/movement therapy can be used to intervene in these situations. I'm glad to know this work now exists, strengthening our understanding of the power of dance and movement. Nirupa Raghunathan, MD raghunan@mskcc.org Director, Pediatric Integrative Medicine, Integrative Medicine Service Department of Medicine Memorial Sloan Kettering Center NY, NY