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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:
“I was listening to this piece over and over again during my despair after divorceand thinking about committing suicide. -- There was a story in the piece which toldabout the only girl standing on the bridge and staring at black water of the riverflowing underneath.”Many of the pieces investigated seem to tell sad stories about loss and mourning.They were loaded with strong metaphors, figures of speech that seem to containJungian (Jung, 1978) archetypical material. The main archetypes were related towater, crossing a river, standing on a bridge, foggy landscape, shadows and oneof the most important -- the archetypal female figure “anima,” which could befound in many songs. These songs seemed to have a close relation to the unconscious,the content of which they were transferring to the conscious in a symbolicform.The songs seemed to tell stories to the suffering individual which on the one handgave hope and on the other hand seemed to help the individual to calm down andwork through her/his strong emotional problems, which could not be handled otherwise.The pieces contain a lot of psychic meanings related to people life situations.After this investigation I became strongly interested in the Jungian analyticpsychology and symbolism. Jungian archetypes and their relation to music andmusical expression are seldom related to theories of music therapy. This is a bitstrange because Jung himself once said: “Music is irritating me because musiciansare handling very deep archetypal psychic material without being aware ofthis.” Jung himself wrote very much about symbolism and forms of art without sayinganything about music. Perhaps this is why Jungian analytic psychology,archetypes, synchrony and collective unconscious have remained a kind of unwrittenpage in the “theoretical book” of music therapy. I started systematically investigatingJungian theory and archetypes and started an on-going research project ofmeaningful life experiences and music, which is explained in brief in the nextchapter. Actually I also have a limited number of materials from Canadian musictherapy students which Professor Ahonen-Eerikainen kindly helped me to collect.Nothing Else Matters -- Music as a means of working through traumasI was thinking about my research design and decided to use music as a means oftuning on the subject group’s imagination with suitable pieces of music. Then thesubject group (at the time approximately 250 persons) was asked to write a storyof their most important life-experience and tell about the piece of music related tothis experience.I applied a diary writing method developed by Jungian psychoanalyst Ira Progoff(1973, 1975) that I modified by using a particular piece of music (Apocalyptic’scello version of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters piece) in order to evoke the subjectgroup’s memories and mental pictures. I have by now got 250 rich and manyfacedstories about the most meaningful moments in the subject group’s life historiesand pieces of music essentially related to them.These experiences were mostly dramatic, very much alike and they weredescribed by using quite similar metaphors. The most meaningful moment were1) the lost idyll of childhood, 2) first love and getting a baby as a life changingexperience, 3) despair and mourning related to losing one’s love, 4) other meaningfullife experiences and losses and 5) the experience of finding a new direction,individuality and integration. These themes were not separate but usually many ofthem were represented in a single story. Some examples:“I was sitting at home in great anxiety. I was feeling bad because I could not at allopen myself in the music therapy group meetings. I put the radio on and there itwas: “If you wish you can fly, if you believe you have wings...when you look at themirror you can see your opponent”...this gave me strength to open up and mirrormyself through the therapy group. Something just slick to its place in my mind.”“I was coming back from the hospital where I was meeting my deadly sick father.The next day I was told that I don’t have to come anymore because my fatherdied last night. Mother’s helplessness and grief was awful and I tried to hide mypain somewhere. Suddenly a piece of music is coming in my mind “I Gotta GetOut Of This Place” (The Animals). So I traveled away after a couple of days.”“My mother died suddenly. I was listening to the Rolling Stones’ piece Mothers littleHelper -- I just understood the meaning of these words later.”I could not get a child and we were trying and trying with my husband. I was sosad and lonely. During evenings I was playing my piano and I played very oftenthe same piece, Rolling Stones’s Tears are Passing by... It is the evening of theday. I sit and watch the children play. The smiling faces all I see they are not forme...this piece is telling my story. I could work through my problem and we decidedto prepare for adopting a child.”The life-stories represented existential depth underlining the constant change oflight and shadows in human life. The experiences were very strong and suddenand they seemed to be related to the Jungian archetypes and synchrony. Theform of these experiences was often such that somebody who is suffering is sittingalone and then he/she hears a song from example the radio, which is tellinghis/her story. Usually they were the metaphors, which said that you can solveyour problem, there is a way out from your despair and it is only you who canmake a change. Music and songs seem to have this kind of function becausemusic says much more that you can say only by words. It is just songs that relateemotions and words together in new ways and “the symbolic distance” from musicis giving the extra energy for the psychic work needed for solving one’s personalproblems.The stories also told about the process where losses in earlier life phases arereactivated and repeated in later life experiences - one must move from onephase of life to another without sufficient maturity. Music seems to play a verymeaningful and important role in working through these experiences. Music is givinghope, consolation and new ideas in the hard situations of life. Music is givinghope, consolation and new ideas in the hard situations of life. In this sense musicalso functions as an important means of self-healing. The meaning of music isbased on moving and flexible cathexes (psychic energy) of human psyche, whichhelp the individual to bind his/her anxiety and restlessness of musical objects. Sothis is some kind of a shortcut to my research project.I am very honored and proud because I could write to your new journal and wishthat Finnish music therapists could continue this kind of collaboration with ourCanadian friends and colleagues.KEY WORDS: Music, life histories, meaningful moments in one’s life, mourning,cathexis and binding.References:Jung, C.G. (1978). Man and his Symbols. Conceived and Edited by Carl Jung.London: Picador.Lehtonen, K. & Niemela, M. (1997). Kielikuvista Mielikuviin (from language picturesto mental pictures). Publications of the Unviersity of Turku. Department ofEducation A: 177.Progoff, I. (1973). Jung, Synchronity and Human Destiny. New York : Dell.Progoff, I. (1975). At the Journal Workshop. New York: Dialogue HouseWorkshop.www..wlu.ca.5
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