music, therapy, and me

I am almost finished with reading my current music therapy text. I have one chapter left after this one, and I am looking forward to the end of the book. It has really enriched me and my understanding of improvisation and music therapy. Having said that, I want to share that I had lots of difficulty with understanding and even liking this particular chapter, Psychodynamic meaning in music therapy. Full disclosure here. I am not a psychodynamic music therapist. I was "raised" in a behavioral context as a music therapist, trained as a sensory integrative therapist, and have decided upon humanism as my primary philosophical view. I don't recall anyone ever saying anything mean, inaccurate, or degrading about folks who are psychodynamic or psychoanalytical in nature during my educational processes, but I've never felt comfortable with the entire set up. I went into the chapter, trying very hard to figure out what was being said. I kept getting caught up in the ...

I am finally getting back into the swing of things by continuing my practice of reading a music therapy text and then synthesizing it into my world of music therapy. It's been some time since I've done this, so forgive me ahead of time if I stumble a bit. In the interest of full honesty, I must admit that I am concurrently reading, writing, and synthesizing (not what I like to do, but important to get back into my routine). Here we go. I am currently reading Mercedes Pavlicevic's Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship. I am currently reading Chapter 11, "Playing with Winnicott's Reality." I am not extremely familiar with Winnicott, so I head over to Wikipedia to see what I am getting into... (Did you hear that? Every single academician just shuddered reading that last sentence. "Wikipedia?? That's not an appropriate resource!!" Okay. I know, but I find that Wikipedia does a great job of synthesizing things into brief ove...

In Chapter 10 of Music therapy in context: Music, meaning and relationship , Mercedes Pavlicevic continues to discuss the perspective of the importance of relationship to the therapy process. She avers that you cannot completely separate music and the client from the client and therapist interaction. This supports what I've been telling interns for the past five years during intern webinars - without the music, the client, and the therapist, music therapy cannot happen. You have to have all three of these elements in place in order to have music therapy. Now, Pavlicevic didn't say this - I did, but I like it when I find something that supports what I believe about music therapy. Anyway. The rest of the chapter offers a perspective on psychodynamic theory and how music therapy fits within that perspective. I have to admit, this is not a theory that I am completely comfortable with - often the folks that I've met who practice within this framework have been very dismiss...

I am a bit behind this week, and I am going to read as I write since I didn't get my reading done before this time. Fortunately, I have some extra time on Sunday mornings to catch up, so here we go. (Also, on Sunday mornings, the cat wants more cuddle time, so this may be interrupted by that as well. In fact, I think I'll go read, take notes, and be the cat's sofa for a bit. See you soon.) Okay. I've read (well, skimmed) through the chapter, but I'm not sure how much I really want to say about it. Here goes. Chapter Five, "Perception, Cognition, and Improvisation," addresses some of the differences between how cognitive psychologists and music therapists perceive music, our music therapy relationships, and how we interact with clients during clinical improvisation. For me, the most relevant concept shared in the chapter was that clients often hear music as a whole - one experience. As music therapists, we often hear the elements of music - we exper...

Chapter four of Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship by Mercedes Pavlicevic is my focus for this Sunday's post. The chapter is titled, "With rigour and imagination: Music therapy and music psychology." (p. 48-54) This short chapter discusses the way we think about music within the worlds of scientific inquiry and art appreciation. There is a brief history lesson about why we think the way we think about art and science, and some discussion about what this means to music therapy and music psychology. The next several chapters promise to delve into music psychology more deeply, but this chapter did a good job of priming my thoughts about this topic. Right off the bat, I had to use my dictionary to find out the difference between the words, "nomothetic" and "idiographic." I love when reading leads me into new vocabulary. According to Pavlicevic, "nomothetic" means finding a "more general and abstract drawing up ...