music, therapy, and me

It is time to catch up a bit on my music therapy reading. I set a goal for myself of getting through 13 music therapy texts in this year. I have finished two books - well, three if you count the book on American folk songs that I read the first part of and then realized that is was mainly descriptions of song origins and how the American versions differed from the other versions. I may never finish that one. So, I guess I am only two books into my stack. With the next 10 days of break ahead of me, I can probably make some inroads into that stack! I am currently working on reaching my Goodreads goal of 250 books this year by reading cozy mysteries on my Kindle. I am not where I want to be on that goal either, but I am confident that I can catch up pretty well. See, the simple fact is that I love reading. It has always been my leisure activity of choice - to sit down with a book and see what types of things I can glean from the pages. While I love to read, I have less motivation when it ...

If you read this blog regularly (first of all, thank you!), then you know that one of my goals for this year is to deepen my knowledge of music as a therapeutic medium. To that end, I was able to justify the purchase of 13 books from Barcelona recently, and I am trying to make professional reading part of my regular work day. At this moment, I am on Winter Break (for six more days), so I am not working, but I am still trying really hard to start the habit of reading some of my textbooks. So, I have started with a book that I have had on my shelf for a long time, but haven't read it from cover to cover before. Drum roll, please...just kidding, I don't expect this type of fanfare for announcements EVERY time I do something... A Comprehensive Guide to Music Therapy: Theory, Clinical Practice, Research and Training , by Tony Wigram, Inge Nygaard Pedersen, and Lars Ole Bonde. I am on the second chapter. It is taking me quite a bit of time to digest - not because it is difficult, but...

I am so happy to see the start of a new month. I am hoping that it will be an easier month than the one before it, and I am renewing my dedication to my goals and desired outcomes for the rest of this year right here, right now. Of course, this post is happening at the beginning of the month, during a full moon period (where I tend to be happier than in other moon phases), after recovering from a nasty infection that was fed by the wrong medication for a week and then finally responded to the right medication, and after an hour of extra time between waking up and actually having to do anything. We will see what my energy and interest levels are during the new moon phase, during my hormonal surges, and around the holidays when my clients and co-workers are stressed to the maximum and I get to soak up all that extra angst coming from all corners. Right now, though, in this moment, I am feeling good about all sorts of things. Of course, if I went back to the first post in October, I bet I...

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...

Whoo-ee. I haven't made it through the first sentence of this article without having to reach for my dictionary. I'm thinking this will be a long synthesis - mainly because I am not all that up on psychoanalytical paradigm jargon. As I scan through the article that I've selected, (citation below if you want to read this with me) I think my new first step is to scan through, identify all the terminology that is unfamiliar to me, and then take the time to define that terminology so I can then read the article with some context of what is being said.  Now, admitting that I don't know what is being said is a HUGELY humiliating thing for me to do. I pride myself on my intelligence and my mastery of vocabulary and of music therapy concepts. When I come across the world of psychoanalytic music therapy, however, my mind starts to shut down because I just do not understand what is being said. These are the times when my behaviorist/humanistic/sensory integration background...

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...