Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

Bonny also considered the metaphoric aspects of music from the early years, as
documented in the following quote:
“The metaphor (image) comes and undresses as it sheds meaning, meaning
within meaning. Music as co-therapist reveals, closes, entices, expands,
proposes, lulls, demands, challenges, confuses, opens, salutes, etc. The
metaphor in response to music opens into the emotion. Sometimes the
metaphor is not present. The emotion may be the metaphor, or emotion comes
before metaphor (or vice-versa).” (Bonny n.d.) 73
In the quote Bonny uses metaphor and image as synonyms. I have not found any
elaborations of the metaphor theme in Bonny’s published writings. However, I think
that the present study provides empirical evidence to the original ideas proposed by
Bonny more than fifteen years ago.
9.5 Clinical applicability of the findings
Clinical BMGIM practice has included people confronted with life-threatening
diseases from the very beginning of the model (Bonny 2002), as documented in
chapter 2 and by the literature database. The classical BMGIM session format was
used in this study, as it was in the two identified clinical efficacy studies with cancer
survivors (Burns 1999, 2001; Clark and McKinney 2003). The findings of this study
support that ten individual BMGIM sessions in the standard format are sufficient to
improve mood and enhance quality of life in cancer survivors. However, clinical
relevance of the research findings may be discussed at several levels. 74 Descriptive
and inferential statistics have been used to provide evidence of the effect of BMGIM
on anxiety and quality of life in the participants. Given the lack of a control group the
clinical relevance can only be indicated quantitatively, however the qualitative data
73 Handwritten note dated N.Y. 12-1-89, in The Bonny Archives folder ”Misc. Notes – GIM”
74 Section 9.5 is based on a paper presented at a public symposium on ”The clinical relevance of music
therapy research” at Aalborg University May 2004. In the paper I discussed ”Types of relevance” and
suggested a distinction at four levels (illustrated with examples from Ph.D. research projects at Aalborg
University): 1. Clinical issues addressed in or by the research, providing evidence; 2. Clinical issues
derived from the research, 3. Direct clinical effects; 4. Communication of new evidence. See Appendix
9.1 for a presentation of these levels. Level 4 will not be addressed in section 8.5, even if there has
already been extensive communication of results in media, professional groups and at national and
international conferences.
356