What I'm Reading - Week Three of Emotional Processes by John Pellitteri

It's that time again - time to update you on what I've been reading. I actually sat down yesterday and did some reading in my book - finished chapter two and looked forward into chapter three of Emotional Processes in Music Therapy by John Pellitteri.

I must say that I am enjoying this book. It is providing me with a framework that is valid (in my opinion) regardless of which theoretician you subscribe to in your way of doing music therapy. I like that. I feel that it gets me one step closer to my goal of a Grand Unifying Theory of Music Therapy - the one thing that links us all together rather than pulling us apart. That's what I want for the music therapy community - things that pull us together instead of pulling us apart. My quest for understanding is moving along quite nicely.

Anyway, back to the book that I am currently reading. I took notes this time around, so here are some of the things that I gleaned from my research yesterday afternoon...

• p. 26 - A Model of Emotional Processes - Lewis (2000) proposed "a topology of emotions" including a) elicitors; b)states; c) expressions; and d) experiences in a temporal sequence
• p. 27 - emotional states are inferred - observers can only see some elicitors and the expression
• often expression and experience of the emotion are simultaneous
• the actual experience can only be reported by the person who feels the emotion - no one else can infer or extrapolate what is happening for the person - only the person...
• This model enfolds all the perspectives that we are discussing in the book - psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and social. They are mutually interactive at all steps.
• p. 28 - "Clinical interventions are targeted at either modifying one of the psychophysiological components or one aspect of the emotional sequence process." - What this means to me - we often focus on one part of the model to provide treatment. Modification of elicitors, states, expressions, and/or experiences is focus of music therapy and all other therapies.
• Representing and Measuring Emotions
• Sloboda and Juslin (2001) - categorical approach to conceptualizing emotions and "the particular representation will influence how the music therapist uses emotions in clinical work." 
• Two ways of representation in order to measure emotions - categorical (emotions are experienced in categories and are distinct from one another with a limited number of "innate and universal emotion categories" and dimensional
• p. 29-30 - dimensional model - activation and valence are key terms.
• Valance - "the degree of pleasant to unpleasant"
• activation - "intensity"
• presented as degrees rather than succinct inflexible emotions - continuum and X/Y scale
• This model does not distinguish between related emotions - depression and sad may be in the same quadrant even thought there are different meanings, etiologies, and action potentials for those emotional states - Clinical note - is this the reasoning behind the Zones of Regulation?
• p. 31 - many representations of emotion cycles - Hevner seems to be best for my brain to comprehend and utilize.
• Hevner's mood wheel - includes more descriptive qualities of mood rather than just naming emotions - manifestations as well as mood words.
• This inclusion of qualities can lead to aesthetic interpretation which is where MTs live - aesthetically interpreting emotion and states.
• measuring emotion happens through three main venues - self-report, expressive behavior, and physiological measures.
• states can only be inferred by an observer in first two venues. The third path, physiological measures, is often intrusive and interrupts the music therapy process - unnatural for activities of daily living.

That's the end of the chapter for this week. Next week is the last chapter of the first part of the book, so I am going to be looking at the anthropological bases for emotion theory this next week before diving into more of the music therapy related chapters.