E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

This paper is about perspective.
Sutton, Julie; Beyond the Ordinairy
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
Julie Sutton
The core of the paper stems from the perspectives with which we all view
psychological trauma. This has a direct relation to how we work, where we
work and who we work with. Society's attitude to the impact of traumatic
events changes, as does our theoretical understanding of the processes
within traumatic experience. Amongst those of us here today a number will
have had direct contact with a traumatic event. Others will have known or
worked with someone who has encountered the impact of trauma. The
efficiency of news-gathering agencies has made traumatic events rapidly
accessible to us and this in itself will have an impact at the individual and
personal level. Events 'beyond the ordinary' are - paradoxically - part of
common human experience.
As well as including the collective experience of trauma and the ways in
which ideas have changed over time, this paper also links the stories of
some of the children and young people I have met in Belfast and Bosnia. I
am grateful to them for agreeing that their stories could become part of this
paper and I have changed names and some geographical details to respect
their privacy.
I will be concentrating on four main areas, or "perspectives". My position is
that in this work it is essential to inform ourselves by using an integrated
approach. More recent developments in thinking about trauma cover a wide
span of literature, yet nonetheless clear theoretical links can be found
between disciplines. With such multi-disciplinary awareness we become
familiar with posttraumatic processes from different places. As well as
increasing our understanding of trauma, this also enables us to identify a
rationale for offering the musical medium in the clinical setting.
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