Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

creative modality. Often, this way of consolidating the core images or metaphors
along with the client's comments about them is sufficient to further the therapeutic
process.
In the postlude discussion, the task is to use integrative imagery as a metaphoric
bridge to the client's everyday life and the focus for the session. A verbal dialogue
may expand, connecting and grounding the metaphors in the life situation of the
client. Insights gained in this way may lead into cognitive operations, like the
discussion of new coping strategies or reformulation of a problem, conflict or
therapeutic goal. There need not be any contradiction between metaphorical and
cognitive thinking, as they are two complementary modes of thought, and BMGIM
may utilize both. But the fundamental nature of BMGIM is metaphorical, not
cognitive, and it is important to stress that insight (in BMGIM) is not a matter of
cognition, but of embodiment. Cognitive thought can hardly be embodied, but
metaphors can.
In summary, the whole BMGIM session can be understood as a movement into the
world of images, metaphors and symbols (through the induction of ASC), a thorough
exploration in the musical-metaphoric mode of consciousness (in ASC and in
narrative form), and a return to normal cognitive mode (NSC) using the imagery as a
bridge - potentially synthesizing the well-known and the unknown into insights of the
client (and the therapist) through metaphoric and cognitive dialogue.
Michael Zanders (2004, personal communication) studied the metaphors used by 12
BMGIM clients to describe their experience of the elements of the session (1. prelude,
2. induction, 3. music travel, 4. return, 5. postlude) and the session as a whole. A male
client described his third session with the following metaphors and analogies for his
experience of the five session elements: 1. Beating that same old drum. 2. Being
carried instead of carrying. 3. Like I was a big pear and I am afraid I am going to eat it
all up and there isn’t going to be anymore left, and the pear tells me, go ahead there
will always be enough. 4. Like saying goodbye. 5. Like being in love with someone
and looking for at gift from that person, which is supposed to mean everything, but it
doesn’t. The whole session was given this metaphorical description: ‘I can see myself
getting there on a broken bicycle, tired, and having to pull a load behind me in a
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