Newsletter - Manfred and Penny Conrad Institute for Music Therapy ...

Welcome to the official opening ofThe Laurier Centre for Music Therapy ResearchDr.Tony Wigram cont d. from page 1Frequently citing his own experiences as a clinician, Wigram spoke about the need forresearch to address the needs of front-line music therapists and how findings needed tobe communicated to them. “Most music therapists are, after all, employed to treatpatients, write reports, and attend meetings closely connected to their clinical caseload... they are certainly not paid to be researchers.”While in Waterloo, Wigram conducted a masterclass with students in Laurier’s undergraduateand graduate Music Therapy programs. The topic was Improvisation, the subjectof Wigram’s most recent book, and the visitor wowed the crowd as he frequentlycalled students to the stage, improvising on instruments with them then exploring themusical conversation that had transpired. He stressed that music is a language, repletewith interruptions and silence. He told the students they need to know how to make aframework and how to back off from it when working with a client.“Tony’s visit was very informational and more importantly, very inspiring,” Ahonen-Eerikainen says. “The students were so impressed -- he showed how complex andwonderful Music Therapy can be. How you have to keep asking questions. How youhave to keep learning. How you have to keep growing to meet the needs of the client.”Tony Wigram on life and work:How he got started:I’m a good musician. I know that and am not shy about that fact. Early on when I wasstudying music I realized my skill was improvisation. A professor told me I should getinto Music Therapy and so I did, encouraged by the realization that I could help peoplewith mental and physical challenges. For years I was a clinician. Now I’m on theUniversity-side of things but my research is a natural extension of my clinical work, thework I started when I got into Music Therapy in the first place.On his clinical work and research then:My early research in the 1980s grew out of my desire to evaluate therapeutic practice. Isuppose the first type of research I was involved in was tidying noise levels in hospitals.I was interested in finding out when clients were really listening, observing their reactionsto noise and music. I also looked at people with physical handicaps and howmusic affected then, the physical effects of sound on the body.On his clinical work and research now:In England, my clinical work is primarily with children with communicative disorders particularlythose in the autistic spectrum. That forms the basis of my research -- I analyzeclinical behavior. I also teach at Aalborg University in Denmark and a large part of theresearch I’m doing now is working out improvisational skills, formalizing what hasn’tbeen made formal before. My book “Improvisation: Methods and Techniques for MusicTherapy clinicians, Educators, and Students”, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishersin 2003 has been years in the making, studying how to do improvisation systematically.On championing the profession:The other thing people know me for has nothing to do with research. Rather, I’m knownfor politics. In England, in the early 80s, I became an advisor for the department ofhealth and worked to get music therapy to be recognized by Parliament. My work continuedin this area as I became involved in the ENTC[European Music TherapyConfederation] in 1989, serving as its co-ordinator. At that time there were five countriesin the organization. By 1999, when I left, there were 24 countries. I was one of the peoplewho founded and developed the World Federation of Music Therapy, serving as itspresident from 1996 to 1999. I’ve just tried to get music therapy to nationally and internationally-agreedupon standards of practice and to promote music therapy within theprofession and to the outside world.44“My research is a natural extension of my clinical work, the work I startedwhen I got into Music Therapy in the first place.”Dr. Tony Wigram*************************************************************************Kimmo Lehtonen, Ph.D. Professor of Education, Department ofEducation, Assistentinkatu 5, 20014 University of Turku,Finland,email: kimleh@utu.fiMUSIC AS A POSSIBILITY OF CHANCEVisions, scenes and dreams -- Jungian archetypes in musicThis article is based on the meaningful moments described in stories ofFinnish life histories and pieces of music related to them. The theoreticalbackground is based on the psychodynamic theory of music and meaning asa transitional object. The authors assumed that different pieces of musiccould in different traumatic life situations help the psychic work of an individual.In this working through process music binds traumatic and painful psychictension as well as the original contents of the original experiencesbehind these traumas. In this process musical pieces get loaded with psychicenergy that remains during years of the life span. This means thatpieces of music can act as “memory anchors”, which contain meaningsbound to different kinds of life experiences.This is quite obvious for those therapists who work with the elderly. Thereare pieces of music, which immediately arouse strong memories, emotionsand mental pictures for example from distant childhood or other meaningfulmoments of one’s life. This happens also with demented people. A piece ofmusic can remind them of many lively memories of people and social interactionwith meaningful persons. These experiences are often such as:“This is a song my long lost mother sang to me. I remember when I wasform years old and my mother sang this song (Somewhere over theRainbow). I wassitting in her lap and there was this specific feeling when we were together.Soon after my mother died and I was thinking that I can never be happyagain. So this is my mother’s song. Everytime I hear it I get this nostalgicfeelign which is happy and sad at the same time.This is also an interesting capability of music because it can expres socalledmixed feelings” -- it can be sad and happy at the same time. Thesekinds of experiences are familiar for clinical music therapists. Few years agoI became more aware of them while making a research of meaningful musicof the Finnish hospitalized psychiatric patients (Lehtonen & Niemela, 1997).As a result we got almost a thousand pieces of music and after that we analyzedthe most meaningful of them. It was obvious that these pieces ofmusic were anchored to the meaningful life experiences of these patients.For example: