E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Sutton, Julie; Beyond the Ordinairy
the family safe was a major priority and I well recall visiting them for the
first time. Jerry's Dad, who was kind and gentle with his children, sat in a
comfortable-looking armchair, resting his hands on the flowery material
covering the arms as we talked. Under his right hand was his legally held
firearm, yet neither he nor I made any reference to it. In Northern Ireland
only the security forces carry firearms - this is not the case in the rest of the
UK where the police are generally unarmed. We are not used to seeing
people carry guns. By not commenting on this - by keeping silent was
exactly how everyone dealt with the unpredictably violent situation.
During the first third of his therapy Jerry frequently tested how safe the
therapy room could be in a number of ways. At first it was important to be
able to provide the space for his continuous, chaotic playing. He needed to
know how long and how often his sessions took place and that I would take
care of this basic boundary for him. He also needed the sense of space
inside the boundary, within which he was unobstructed in communicating
how he felt. Jerry needed to know how "safe" I was and what I could
tolerate. At one point I remember him bouncing sticks violently off the four
walls. While at times the beaters flew around my head I never felt that the
space had become unsafe - it was as if Jerry was pushing at the very fabric
of the room to check how resilient and containing it could be. It was not
always easy to stay in the room and at one point Jerry climbed onto the
windowsill and put his head out of the window. I felt at the time how aptly
he was communicating how difficult it was and noted how relieved he
looked when I invited him to rejoin me in the room. The reliability of the
space and what it could contain was central to this early work. Garland
picked up this point when she wrote:
"we need to be able to listen without being so overwhelmed by the
raw intensity of our patients' experiences that we retreat from the
emotional impact of what they are saying…..If we retreat in this way
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Winnicott, D. W. (1966) "The Ordinary Devoted Mother" In: Babies and Their Mothers
Free Association Books
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