This is a narrative of the Sugarman Project, a community project in Central Australia concerned with research into ancient Mediterranean and Greek traditions of alcohol use and abuse. The project was initiated as a response to a request from an Aboriginal man for a ‘story about alcohol’ which would fill a missing link in traditional Aboriginal conceptualisation of alcohol. The ‘story’ would have a role in indigenous treatment of alcohol abuse, put in a symbolic form consistent with oral teaching methods of indigenous custom. The project is centred around the development of an original performance script. The thesis describes the origin, context, development, rationale and implications of the project, especially with a view to considering the potential of the mythologem of Dionysos as a therapeutic paradigm in intercultural substance abuse work. Particular attention is given to the relationship between Aboriginal and European therapeutic practitioners and the use of myth, metaphor, symbolic function and specific Aboriginal ‘dreaming stories’ as a source and backup to therapeutic practice. Principal themes include the role of mythopoetic symbol formation in the development of thinking; reflections on the presence of theriomorphic serpentine imagery in the work; the role of stories as mental containers of therapeutic theory; reflections on the ‘milieu’ needed for implementing intercultural therapeutic procedures; examples of positive indigenous responses to alcohol work; preliminary notions on cross cultural transference communications; and reflections on primal states associated with alcohol intoxication. The conclusion is that the experience of developing a Western myth in concert with Aboriginal colleagues confirms the value of the initial, seminal suggestion that ‘dreaming stories’ have an authentic place in the repertoire of alcohol treatment and education / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/182153 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | San Roque, Craig, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, Faculty of Health, Humanities and Social Ecology, School of Social Ecology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Source | THESIS_FHHSE_SEL_SanRoque_C.xml |
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