music, therapy, and me

Well. Of all the articles that I could have chosen, this one is a doozy for me. I am surrounded by vocabulary that I do not understand, and I am determined to figure out what the big deal is about this guy and his writings. I want to be familiar with these theories so I can assimilate them into my own understanding of what happens in family systems. I want to understand so I can deepen my own knowledge to become a better music therapist for my clients. Okay. For some reason, however, Freudian psychology confuses me, and this article has LOTS of references to Freud. I know that this article was published in 1960, so most folks only really had Freud and Jung to focus on, but I feel that we have grown so much since then to include other types of perspectives. Freud always makes me feel a bit cranky - mainly because I think that most of his theories about humans were wrong - so having to read from a Freudian perspective makes me automatically confused and disgruntled. Nevertheles...

After a hiatus, I am getting back into my process of reading things and starting to look at them from my professional perspective. Inspired by several of the folks that I heard during the Online Conference for Music Therapy, I decided to FINALLY read Winnicott's writings about holding and relationships and every single thing I could find on the internet for free. (I don't have lots of extra money to be spending on subscriptions, and I could use my state library card to get access to more, but I'm not exactly sure how to do that, so I'm not going to dedicate time to that process right now...) The first thing that I found was an article that was written in 1960. Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 41:585-595 It was free, so I have it printed out and am ready to start reading. Here's what I know about Winnicott before starting to read all of this. Lots of people reference his writing, especially in the in...

Okay, okay. I know that I haven't really been as dedicated to this type of blogging situation as I would have liked recently, but there have been lots of things going on. No more excuses. The only thing that will interfere with all of my blogging will be the continued snow days (that was Friday's excuse) and my dependence on medication (Saturday's excuse!). My article for this time around is entitled, Music Therapy in the Special Education Setting written by John Pelliteri in 2000 and published in the Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation , edition 11(3&4), pages 379-391. There you go. I found it on Google Scholar in pdf format. This is less of a research paper as it is a persuasive piece written for a group of people who are not music therapists but who may act as referral points. I like the opportunity to read pieces that demonstrate music therapy to those who have limited information about our profession. It is always interesting to see how fol...

Here I sit...again...staring at the cursor waiting for some inspiration for what I want to learn about on this day. I have made my list of keywords - music therapy, special education, dual diagnoses, adolescents, early education, upper elementary, etc. The words just go on and on. I can also use the names of diagnoses, but I'm not quite at that point yet. Eventually I will be investigating more around specific diagnoses, but I am not as interested in that aspect of thought at the moment. For now, I am sticking with generalities. So, I head over to Google Scholar to find an article to think about. My rules are that I need to be able to access the entire article without having to pay for things and that the articles have to be something related to my keyword list. That's it. It also has to catch my interest. So, I've decided to read through an article by John Pelliteri written in 2000. It's a "Consultant's Corner" article for the Journal of Educational...

This is supposed to be a Synthesis Sunday post, full of information about my current foray into music therapy, but I am on vacation and haven't done any of my post-it note work or synthesis. In fact, I need to go back to last week's post to see where I am in the process. I think I'm almost finished, but I'm not exactly sure...Oh. I stated that I would write about this article while here on vacation, so I am going to get my reading glasses and do some of this work. But, I don't have any post-it notes. What a lame excuse - just write on paper! You can do this. Sigh. You're right, rational brain. I'll do it. So, here's how my initial synthesis process goes... Let's look at the abstract. Desire for social interaction with increased isolation and feelings of loneliness from peers. Singing, rhythmic games, creative movement, and dance - first intruding thought - how is creative movement different from dancing?? - dyads, small groups, large g...

Okay, okay. It is actually Monday when I am writing this Synthesis Sunday post - mainly because I got busy yesterday with other projects and situations and did not get into the research part of Sunday. So, here we go again!! I have selected my article. It is not from a music therapy source because I want to expand my vision. Here are the details... Eren. B. (2015). The use of music interventions to improve social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in integrated group music therapy sessions. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 197, 207-213. Retrieved from: www.sciencedirect.com I selected this particular article because it hit several of my keywords - adolescents, group, music therapy, socialization. The article itself doesn't have much information - there is no real quantification involved in the article - no numbers, no comparisons, no statistics - but there are more references to practical applications for things. I am looking forward to continuing r...

I have finished the first article in my current Sunday focus posts - the worksheet is finished and it is time to move on. If you are interested - here's what my final version looks like (with all the paragraph marks and the spelling questions - that's how I like to write...). I received a copy of the Journal of Music Therapy this week (I think), but I have not opened it yet. I'm going to be searching through research references to see what catches my interest. I have not done that yet, but you can go through the process with me... First step - Google Scholar. My search string was "music therapy adolescents special education." The dates on these top results indicate to me that this is not a well researched population, especially recently, but this is not surprising. I know that there isn't much available on this particular age group, and I have my theories about why - that isn't really relevant here, but is interesting to me. Most of these resour...

It is Sunday again in this part of the world, and that means sitting down and thinking a bit about research. Last week, I started synthesizing an article about identity formation and working with adolescents (the full citation is below) that came to me courtesy of Music Therapy Perspectives . I described my process. The task for today is to actually put all of the information that I saw into my reference sheet and finish it all up. If you are interested in using my synthesis sheet, it is available on this link in my Teachers Pay Teachers store ...It doesn't look really impressive on the thumbnail form, but it works for me. It might work for you!! I left off in at the process of organizing my post-it note thoughts into different categories and then making the form a bit more final, so let's get to it! I think I will start with the thoughts on the teal post-its. Here are the rough thoughts... the population was "teenagers who had mild and moderate developmental d...