23.7. 1993 Vitoria-Gasteiz / Spain - World Federation of Music Therapy

single gesture, G. succeeded in starting a global
perceptive process concerning the five senses.
I had the impression to see G 's act of slapping himself
as a way to perceive his body joined together ( as if he
were scared to break into pieces).
According to E, Bick's theory, in a non-integrated state
of a very young child, the need of a containing object
seems to produce a frantic search of an object (a light,
a voice or other sensory stimulus) which is able to
attract his attention and, therefore, it can be
experimented as a way of keeping all the parts of the
child, of his personality, together. The best object is the
nipple, together with the holding, the talking and the
smell of a mother. Therefore the infant experiments this
containing object as a 'skin' When this primary function
is umbalanced the infant can develop the idea of a
'second skin', which has the function of replacing the
dependence from the object with a fictitious
independence. This 'fictious independence' consists in
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an inexact use of some mental functions and it provides
a substitute to the function of container of the skin.
I thought it was necessary to come out from the circle
that was built around G,: slap, an impediment to the
slap, reproach, slap, In this situation G, was of course
the strongest, and everybody else could not experiment
anything else but impotence, So, I tried to consider a
slap as a sonorous message, in order first of all to
organize the intervention, and then to communicate my
presence, By means of the technique of reflecting I
transfered G's video aggressiveness on the cymbal and
on the drums: every time G. slapped his face I answered
playing instruments with the same intenseness G. had
used on his fave. As a result the situation turned over:
as soon as G, gave vent to his anger on his face, and I
vented my anger on the instruments to reflect him, G's
reaction was to take the drumsticks off me, to throw the
drums on the floor and to hold my hands; with me he
behaved like all the people behaved with him when he