Good afternoon and welcome. I am delighted and greatly honored to introduce my esteemed colleague and dear friend, Dr. Fran Levy as the 2013 Marian Chace Lecture honoree. There are numerous ways that we know Fran. There is her book, Dance Movement Therapy: A Healing Art, a classic in the field that is in its fourth printing. Fran was the senior editor of Dance & Other Expressive Arts Therapies: When Words Are Not Enough and she has taught extensively both nationally and internationally. Fran’s training and credentials include her status as a fellow in the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, a licensed clinical social worker, and a board certified dance/movement therapist. A forerunner in the field of integrative creative arts therapies, she ran the original training group in the mid-1970s. In 1980, she received her doctorate in the integration of the arts in psychotherapy.

Currently, Fran has a private practice in individual psychotherapy. Her specialty is integration of the arts in treatment. Additionally, she offers a group that is a combination of supervision and training in integrative arts therapies. Both are in Park Slope Brooklyn, very local and very near here to this conference.

As we think about Fran, we know while she works locally, she thinks globally, both in time and space, in the world at large, and within the very personal locality of each soul she helps on a cellular level. Not just patients and colleagues, but all are touched by her educated heart, considerable warmth, and wonderful sense of humor.

Fran is like a Google map. She can gather in the whole person with a wide view or with various lenses. She can also zoom in with great detail. On many levels, in varied modalities, she mines the geography of the soul, and does it so well with the spirit of an enthusiastic explorer. She makes the journey fully and with mutuality.

I would like to put my philosopher’s hat on now. This is something Fran and I share, not the hat, but a love of philosophy. There is a wonderful educator, Dr. Mejai Avoseh at the University of South Dakota who explains a process we as dance/movement and creative arts therapists are most familiar with. It is the method of Socratic dialogue. Avoseh (2005) speaks to a core element of our healing art—collaboration. In the following quote, when you see “teacher” or “educator” substitute “therapist,” and when you see “learner” substitute “patient.”

The use of this method enjoins the teacher to recognize learners as partners who are capable of creating new knowledge. And that; learners are recognized as individuals who can proceed from the known to the unknown. The thrust of the Socratic Method is to guarantee the learner some of the powers in the learning situation…Thus, Socrates was interested in behavior change through engaging individuals in dialogue and helping them deliver knowledge that would help improve the quality of their lives. (Avoseh 2005, p. 376)

We can see a parallel to our therapeutic process. Traveling from known to unknown, the patient returns to knowing in a fresh amplified way through interactive, physical, expressive dialogue, most often nonverbal. Avoseh (2005) further underscores the value of self discovery as more desirable than the swallowing of another’s interpretation or dogma:

In summary, the Socratic dialogue was a method of drawing out individuals to entrust their valuable ideas to conversation and to see themselves as creators of true knowledge. The Socratic dialogue as a method repositions the educator as an intellectually humble companion who joins others to create knowledge. Furthermore, his method projects the learner as someone who should be entrusted with and given sufficient power to create knowledge. (p. 376)

Avoseh further states that,

… Socrates conceived himself as an intellectual ‘midwife’ “out to bring other men’s (and women’s) thoughts to birth, to stimulate them to think and to criticize themselves, not to instruct them. The central focus of the Socratic midwifery is to help others to generate true ideas that can help them to right conduct…The end objective is to know and live the good life. (p. 376)

Some of our therapeutic correlates are understanding, insight, and healing, which are witnessed and reflected back by the therapist.

Now, back to our craft and Fran specifically. As a dancing creative midwife, Fran uses the dialectic of movement, indeed all expression, to elicit and make manifest the patient’s truth with care, sensitivity, concern for the vulnerability of the other, and yes, she has been known to use humor. She uses all of her essence to lead out the health and answers that are already within the person. Albeit these are most frequently under the individual’s radar-screen of self-knowledge.

In summary, there are many gifts in store for us today. I am certain you will resonate with what Fran knows is within each of us. She gives us permission to be comfortable and confident in who we are as individuals and clinicians. She provides a call to arms for us to both relax into ourselves and bring our creative and unique selves out into the world of healing, and she invites us to experience our personal competence and mastery. Please join me in a movement gesture:

Place your hands on your sternum. From there, take your hands from yourself and bring an offering by moving your hands forward with your palms upward.

Keep your hands open and form a receiving gesture.

Now, please welcome Dr. Fran Levy by putting your hands together.