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‘Shooting at the Sun God Apollo’: The Apollonian-Dionysian Balance of the TimeSlips Storytelling Project

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Abstract

In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche celebrated the dueling forces of reason and emotion as personified by the ancient Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. A subtle Apollonian-Dionysian balance can be observed in TimeSlips, a group-based creative storytelling activity developed in the 1990s and increasingly used in dementia care settings worldwide. This article explains how the Apollonion-Dionysian aspects of TimeSlips are beneficial not only for persons with dementia, but also for their carers. Narrative data from medical students at Penn State College of Medicine who participated in TimeSlips at a local retirement community are shared.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Joel Kroft of Country Meadows for partnering in this collaborative endeavor.

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There are no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, Penn State College of Medicine, 500 University Drive, Hershey, PA, 17033, USA

    Daniel R. George

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  1. Daniel R. George
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Correspondence to Daniel R. George.

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George, D.R. ‘Shooting at the Sun God Apollo’: The Apollonian-Dionysian Balance of the TimeSlips Storytelling Project. J Med Humanit 34, 399–403 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-013-9232-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-013-9232-x

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