E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Bonde, Lars Ole: Analogy And Metapher In Music Therapy Theory ...
The three levels are connected through a (poetic) ‘re-configuration’, making
us (the reader) anble to ‘see’ the world in new ways. This is also the
‘subversive’ quality of the narrative. Or in Ricoeur’s own words: “We are
following therefore the distiny of a prefigured time that becomes a
refigured time through the mediation of a configured time.” (Ricoeur: Time
and Narrative, quoted after McGaughey, p.429)
The literary framework of Ricoeur’s theory consists of epics, dramas,
and novels, but it does not take much imagination (!) to see the fictional
narrative replaced with a client’s own narrative: his/her life story, as
configured in the therapy. In metaphoric psychotherapy - like GIM - the
client is engaged in a confrontation between the world of images &
metaphors and his/her troubled life/ semantic world: Using Ricoeur’s
concepts the client’s life world is Mimesis1 , the metaphoric therapeutic
narrative (in which the three levels of metaphoric imagery are identified) is
Mimesis2 , and the (positive) outcome may be Mimesis3. -
Metaphor works at the level of the sentence, and symbols at the level of the
narrative, is McGaughey’s suggestion. I will now briefly illustrate, how this
makes sense in the context of GIM - how the three levels of tensions and of
mimesis may be experienced by a GIM client:
Vignette: A male client (50 years old) gave, as a reason for continuing his
GIM work, when challenged by his wife, who wanted couple counseling: GIM
“gives me images of myself as a functioning person in my own right. I don’t
just want to adjust my behavior”. - He had experienced how metaphoric
imagery evoked by the music in GIM would allow him to experience what in
this discourse is called the tension inherent in metaphors at the levels of
the sentence and the episode (example: finding his way to a large, beautiful
mansion with many empty rooms and no proper road leading to it; or
experiencing himself as a dancer, allowing himself to dance as a solist and
enjoying it fully). Like many clients he was encouraged by the narrative
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