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Aesthetics of Hyperactivity: A Study of the Role of Expressive Movement in ADHD and Capoeira

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Abstract

In the established classification of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity are primarily interpreted as neurodevelopmental disorders connected to a set of behavioral symptoms or traits. In this construction, behaviors or actions are understood in terms of a fundamental dualism between the acting body and the regulating or executing mind, which expresses a representational model of the mind. As an effort to challenge the representational description, this article addresses the expressive aspects of movement and behavior in ADHD. Based on a qualitative study combining ethnographic and phenomenological methods, the article focuses on a relationship between aesthetic or expressive bodily movement and behavioral awareness in children diagnosed with ADHD, and draws on the experimental and expressive aesthetics of capoeira to propose a rethinking of the role of movement in ADHD behavior. Capoeira’s perpetual movement is shown to transform the general traits of hyperactivity into a medium for expression and experimentation. When practiced by diagnosed children, capoeira helped them to gain expressive release, rather than to feel imprisoned, victimized, or even categorized by the hyperactive events that happen to them. Capoeira thus seems to afford a therapeutic potential for change immanent to the hyperactive movements associated with ADHD.

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Notes

  1. Since most research in hyperactivity disorder takes its point of departure in the classification ADHD from the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) the European equivalent of hyperkinetic disorder will not be considered here.

  2. Such phenomenological scholars as Nöe (2000, 2012), Sheets-Johnstone (1980, 2011a, b), Legrand (2007), Legrand and Ravn (2009), and Krüger (2009, 2010, 2014) have all included discussions of art, aesthetic experience or different artistic practices in relation to phenomenological issues. However, all of these theorists more or less introduce art or aesthetic experience as paradigmatic or exemplary for perception in general. In Alva Nöe’s words, “what is true of the experience of the work of art is true of human experience quite generally” (Noë, 2012, p. 2). However, in this image art or aesthetic experience is proposed as an expression of lived experience or “perception in general,” and thus remains within a representational image of art in the sense that art is described as a representation of a presupposed “natural” activity of perception—in essence presupposing a fundamental nature behind “natural” perception. What is often missing in these phenomenologically embodied notions of art and aesthetics is an account of the genuinely creative or expressive aspect of art (for a more in depth treatment of this see Levin, 2015).

  3. To secure the anonymity of the children all their names have been replaced by pseudonyms in this article.

  4. This tendency is associated to the etymological mistake of confusing the word-forming element of dia- meaning “through” with di- meaning “two”.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 2A, 1353, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Kasper Levin

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Levin, K. Aesthetics of Hyperactivity: A Study of the Role of Expressive Movement in ADHD and Capoeira. Am J Dance Ther 38, 41–62 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10465-016-9211-7

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