PhD (UCT) MA FA (UCT) BA (UCT)
Author
Teacher
Narrative Arts Therapy Practitioner
Dr Marlene Winberg (PhD) specialises in narrative arts therapy and trauma recovery for women and teens. She holds a Masters of Arts in Fine Art and BA in Drama and Literature from the University of Cape Town. She holds certificates in a range of healing modalities, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from the Applied College of Psychology in the UK, and Narrative Therapy from the Dulwich Centre in Australia.
She has studied the relationship between neuroscience and indigenous approaches to well-being through the arts, and brings this holistic, trans-disciplinary approach to her practice.
As South African ambassador to the international human rights organisation, The Worlds Children's Prize Foundation for the past 25 years, she has counseled hundreds of vulnerable women and children whose stories include themes of loss. She works with trafficked girls and youths in prison, where her Narrative Arts Therapy programme helps the children to reconstruct their broken identities.
Dr Winberg is the author of several books on the narrative arts, including Annotations of loss and abundance, an examination of the trauma narratives, drawings, paintings and maps made by four 19th century San children who were taken from pre colonial Namibia and landed up in the Cape colony (Winberg 2014).
Her Narrative Arts Therapy practice is based online at www.marlenewinberg.com
Dear Reader
Our personal stories are not cast in stone – they are continually evolving. We have a great deal of influence over how our narratives change and grow throughout our lives.
Narrative Arts Therapy is an aesthetic and experiential process that will lead you to gain valuable insight into your personal story – with the view to reframing it in strong, meaningful ways. We do this through engaging the sensorial arts because it opens up neural pathways that remain shut otherwise, thus accessing more parts of the brain than words can do alone.
What is it not?
Narrative arts therapy is not psycho analysis and it does not diagnose. It is a philosophy that draws on science, aesthetics and the arts, to honour our innate human ability to reconstruct our stories in beneficial ways.
What techniques do we use during a session?
The process relies on a range of the expressive and creative arts, including writing, mind-mapping, basic painting or drawing, movement, music, storytelling, play or clay – depending entirely on the individual's specific needs. Many people prefer simple tools, while others require more complex expressions. (You do not need any experience of writing or art making.)
This hands-on methodology supports a person's ability to tell their story in a self-compassionate way through images and words. From this vantage point it becomes easier to re-construct broken storylines, or develop a strong, value-based narrative.
Who benefits from the Narrative Arts Therapy programme?
My practice focusses on women and teenagers whose story lines are dominated by feelings of anxiety, loss, trauma or major life changes, such as puberty, menopause, chronic illness or divorce.
What does the Narrative Arts Therapy programme involve?
The programme consists of an introductory session where we explore what narrative arts therapy offers us. We will help you to identify the storylines you want to work with and give you the course book, The Story of You.
This introductory session may be followed by completing the first module, a short-term therapy in seven sessions. You will then be equipped to choose wether or not you want to proceed to the second and third modules, where you will explore the narrative arts world of healing in further depth.
To make a complementary, introductory online appointment of 30 minutes, WhatsApp 27 (0) 833025153 or email info@manyeka.com.
Thanks for popping in.
Marlene
Dr Marlene Winberg | marlenewinberg.com | Design by True Identity