E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Abstract
Schiltz-Ludwig, Lony: When Aggression is disturbed ...
When Aggressiveness is Disturbed…..
Lony Schiltz-Ludwig
Analytically orientated music therapy has shown to be a good therapeutic
mediation in various cases of disturbance of aggressiveness, related to an
underlying borderline personality organization in adolescence. By
stimulating the emergence of fantasies, of repressed drives and negative
feelings, by allowing their elaboration and integration in a non-anxiogenic
atmosphere, it is especially effective in weakly mentalized structures and in
conduct disorders related to a borderline organization.
Recent developments in French, German and Anglosaxon literature
concerning the concept of borderline personality structure in adolescence
are analyzed. As these young people risk developing a lasting personality
pathology in adulthood, tertiary prevention, i.e. treating those showing the
first symptoms of an evolution towards an abnormal personality is essential.
Case studies illustrating different forms of disturbance of aggressiveness,
ranging from inhibition, interiorisation of aggressive drives and somatization
to disinhibition and antisocial behavior, follow the different stages of the
therapeutic process in long lasting individual and group therapies.
The effects of musicotherapy have been evaluated thanks to a methodology
both quantitative and qualitative, especially developed for the needs of this
research, and on the basis of a quasi-experimental design using a control
group.
The results of the phenomenological and statistical evaluation, based on
psychometric tests, observational frames, rating scales and projectiv tests,
have been conclusive, showing the joined action of music on narcissism and
the capacity of objectal love and the restoration of the process of
subjectivation in adolescents. They are discussed in reference to the
unsolved question of the exact action of music therapy in the treament of
conduct disorders related to an underlying borderline personnality
organization, and on the basis of recent developments in psychopathology of
adolescence.
1. Introduction
Adolescents presenting various forms of aggressivity problems - such as
inhibition, heteroaggressive acting out or aggressivity directed against their
own bodies- have been treated with the help of a psychotherapy using an
artistic mediation, combining musical improvisation and the creation of
written stories under musical induction. During the therapeutic process, the
musical production and the imaginative production are complementary and
interact to eventually lead to the imaginative and symbolic elaboration of
the violent phantasms, to changes concerning the moral functions, to an
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