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Caribbean Journal of Education

Collective Poetry Making in the Poesis of Psychohistoriographic Cultural Therapy

Psychohistoriographic Cultural Therapy (PCT), pioneered in Jamaica in 1978, is a post-colonial model of group psychotherapy that privileges the use of the poetic to heal historical traumas. Embedded in PCT is a technique of collective poetry making. In this paper, the process is chronicled in five case studies: Madnificent Irations at the Bellevue Mental Hospital (Jamaica); Rethinking Cultural Diversity at the Cooperative Association of States for Scholarship (Georgetown University, Washington); Windows for Wavelengths at the Maudsley Hospital (London, UK); Identity and Achievement at the Afro-Caribbean Mental Health Centre (Wolverhampton, UK); and Mite de La Laine at the McGill University, (Montreal, Canada). An analysis of the PCT process and the collaborative poems created highlights how this model accelerates insight and resilience, confronts stigma, and facilitates rehabilitation and productivity.

Bellevue Garden Theatre performance circa 1967

Bellevue Garden Theatre Performance, circa 1978.

Publication Date: 
Thursday, 13 May 2021
Issue: 
Pages: 
151-173
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