Voices Heard

“Jean Daoud has done a great work. It is a shame he does not get the appropriate recognition for it. I mean, it is a shame that his work does not get the appropriate recognition. In 1986 we trained with him… and up till today (the interview was in 2012) the experience lives within me as if it were today… I have tried to look for an equal for it. Ever since I left his workshop, I looked for a technique that includes theater and therapy at the same time. I tried… I took trainings in all kinds of group therapies. None of them could include all what we have taken with Daoud. Really… with him, you would go upstage, and it were as if he shook you, he shook you, he shook you, he shook you, until you shook off every bit of dirt, every dust, every tear or so, then you go down and sit. This is how things were for me. I never found a therapy that could give this same effect. It is indeed an extremely strong effect and a very important one, because it gave results, and it gave them fast… You can compare it if you wish with all the other techniques. Psychoanalysis has an effect, on the long run it gives you a relief, but gently and lightly… In group dynamics consisting of a sit in, you talk and talk… you don’t have a body, just thoughts… I tried to compare it to psychodrama too, to role playing, to all these things… I felt nothing gave the same therapeutic effect… that I took from his therapy… At one moment I thought I had forgotten it all, I thought I wouldn’t feel things any more, I thought I got blocked and rusted… But, when I was asked to do an exercise, it was all there, as if twenty years haven’t gone by. The moment I stood on stage I was present, my emotions and feelings were present, the expression was present… just like this, they appear, just like this, it is all there. As if not a minute has passed since I trained with Jean Daoud. This is why I believe the training with Jean Daoud isn’t limited by time, isn’t limited by boundaries… Working with him surpasses time and space. That’s it, when you know his method no other method will matter to you. You can feel its influence everywhere…”. – Mireille Nasrallah, PhD, psychotherapist, a 1986 trainee, 2012