E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Bonde, Lars Ole: Analogy And Metapher In Music Therapy Theory ...
affective grounding of the whole process, often more intense in character
than in a verbal psychotherapy model.
In this paper I cannot go into a deeper discussion of the role of the music (in
GIM), or of the metaphoric qualities of music, in spite of its crucial
importance. Important papers on the these topics are Bruscia (1994),
Summer (1995), Skaggs (1992), Goldberg (1995).{1}
Image, Language, and Metaphor
Imagery based psychotherapy is often presented as an ‘alternative’ to
verbal psychotherapy, the last type addressing secondary processes of
insight and understanding. However, the therapeutic dialogue is still based
on language and verbal communication - and we need to clarify the nature
and function of the ‘special language’ required, both during imagery work
(verbal report from the client and and interventions from the therapist) and
in processing. With the exception of Ansdell’s important paper (Ansdell
1997) I have not found any discussion of this aspect of ‘the language
problem’ in the literature, probably because it addresses the question of
imagery and language as representational systems. My understanding of this
is inspired by Horowitz (1983), who has developed a model of three modes
of representation: enactive, image and lexical. I suggest the following
working definition: The metaphoric language - the special language used in
verbal communication of imagery in all modalities - connects the lexical and
the image modes, as well as the enactive and the lexical modes. It is a
special discourse within verbal communication, enabling verbal
representation of imaginal and enactive experiences.
The socalled “Oneirotherapists” (Sheikh & Jordan 1983, Högberg
1991, - the term covers ‘daydream therapies’ like Desoille’s “Directed
daydream” and Leuner’s “Guided affective Imagery”) use “extended visual
fantasies in narrative form to obtain information about the motivational
system of the individual, including elements of conflict, perceptual
distortion, self-perception, and early memories.” (Sheikh & Jordan, p. 401).
I think the metaphoric language is what makes the narrative possible. It is
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