This book introduces Group Analytic Music Therapy (GAMT), different levels of the group, and the different characteristics of musical images. It illustrates that music is the royal road to the unconscious just like dreams. Images created during group analytic music therapy have similar clinical value to dreams. These images, just like dreams, communicate through feelings and body sensations. Their language is metaphorical, emotional and insightful. They speak from and to our hearts. In GAMT, the role of the music therapist is to find ways of making the best therapeutic use of clients feelings, thoughts, bodily sensations, dreams, and images created through music. Images created during improvisation or therapeutic music listening can be seen as part of unconscious inter-subjective and interpersonal processes within the group. In GAMT, when someone shares their musical image, other clients are encouraged to provide their own associations too. These images are their own, but at the same time part of the groups collective unconsciousness.
Divided into three sections, part one sets the philosophical foundation of GAMT. Part Two presents the theory and method of GAMT and different characteristics of musical images, while the third part illustrates theory through a clinical case study of Mary, an invisible woman who turned visible and found her voice during GAMT. The book includes both theoretical and clinical sections and several case study examples and in-depth analyses. Away from being a first of its kind in music therapy field, this book expands group music therapy theories and proposes a new way of defining clinical group music therapy practice.
Heidi Ahonen. 2007
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Preface
Foreword
Introduction
PART I: FOUNDATION 3 Prelude: Being a Group Member Is Part of Who I Am
Chapter 1: Family
1.1 Footprints Lead to the Sausage Factory
1.1.1 Elephants in the Therapy Room
1.1.2 Family Reunion
Chapter 2: Empathy
2.1 Lack of Empathy
2.2 Empathetic Understanding
2.3 When Good Enough Is Not Enough
2.4 Empathy or Sympathy?
Chapter 3: Therapy Room as The Waiting Room
3.1 Feeling Safe in Order to Feel Unsafe
3.1.1 Wearing Social Antennae
3.1.2 Why Is It Frightening to Come to a Therapy Group?
3.2 People Need Their Defenses
3.2.1 Sweeping Under the Carpet
3.2.2 Psychopathological Balance
Chapter 4: Home from Never-Never Land
4.1 Contact
4.2 This Sounds Like My Story!
4.3 Taking Care of Your Self
4.4 Need to Be Needed
4.5 Living in the Here and Now
Chapter 5: Metaphors
5.1 Frame
5.2 Holding Environment and Container
5.3 Envelope
5.4 Laboratory
5.5 Garden or Vineyard
5.6 Playground
5.7 Jigsaw Puzzle
5.8 Peeling an Onion
5.9 Matrix
5.9.1 Psychic Network
5.9.2 Group Climate
5.9.3 Group as a Mother
Chapter 6: Group Development
6.1 HoneymoonThe Engagement and Formative Phase
6.2 Love and HateThe Differentiation IndividuationReactive Phase
6.3 Intimacy and MutualityThe Mature Phase
6.4 DeathThe Termination Phase
6.5 Next Move?
PART II: GROUP ANALYTIC THERAPY (GAMT) 43 Prelude: Conducting the Group
Chapter 7: Free-Floating Discussion
7.1 Silence
Chapter 8: Three Windows
8.1 The Intersubjective Window
8.2 The Interpersonal Window
8.3 The Group-as-a-Whole(Group Matrix) Window
Chapter 9: Levels of the Group Matrix
Chapter 10: Building GAMT Sessions
Chapter 11: Clinical Improvisation
11.1 Referential Improvisation
11.2 Nonreferential improvisation
Chapter 12: Therapeutic Music Listening
12.1 Psychoauditive Method
Chapter 13: Images
13.1 Sharing Images
13.2 Musical Images as Symbols and Metaphors
Chapter 14: MusicThe Royal Road to the Unconscious
Chapter 15: Externalization-Internalization Process
15.1 Safe Symbolic Distance
15.2 Musical Image as Blanket
15.3 Letting Go and Holding Back
Chapter 16: Hall of Mirrors
Chapter 17: Practical Issues
17.1 Group Members
17.2 Goals
17.3 Nature of the Group
17.4 Expelling the Victim Identity
17.5 Rules
17.6 Room and Equipment
Chapter 18: Musical Images and the Group Matrix 113
18.1 Visual Analysis
Chapter 19: I Am Able to Communicate Through Music
Level of Social Interaction
19.1 Musical Image as a Tool of Communication
19.1.1 Can Improvisation Be Trivial?
19.1.2 MusicA Language Without Words
19.1.3 The Need to Belong
Chapter 20: The Music Reminds Me of My Mother
Level of Transference
20.1 Musical Image as Transference of Past Relationships
20.1.1 Empathic Failure
20.1.2 Bipolar Transference
20.1.3 Self-Object Dimension
20.1.4 Conflictual, Repetitive, and Resistive Dimension
20.2 Musical Images and Reconstruction of Trauma
20.2.1 Reconstruction of a Traumatic Event
20.2.2 Musical Trauma Reconstruction
Chapter 21: This Music Sounds as My Feelings Feel
Level of Projection
21.1 Musical Image as a Processor of Hidden
Wishes and Fears
21.1.1 We Can Fly in Our Images
21.1.2 Frightening Images in the Early
Phases of Therapy
21.2 Containing and Holding Musical Images
21.2.1 Containing UFOs
21.2.2 Music as a Not Me Personification
21.2.3 Roles Reversed
21.3 Music as an Expanding Self-Object
21.4 Musical Image as a Self-Representation
21.5 Musical Self-State
Chapter 22: This Music Touches Us All Level of Collective Unconscious
22.1 Transformative Group Image
22.1.1 In Group Language
22.1.2 Archetypal Symbols
22.1.3 Collective Communication
22.1.4 Group Images and Group Dreams
22.1.5 Musical Image as Polyphony
Chapter 23: Images and Interpretation
23.1 What to Avoid
23.2 Intimate Group Drama
23.3 Free-Floating Associations
23.4 Imagery Intervention and Interpretation
23.5 Countertransference
23.6 Vicarious Traumatization
23.7 Sharing the Journey
PART III: TOO SCARED TO BE VISIBLE
Mary: A Case Study of a Voiceless Woman
Who Found Her Identity in a Hall of Mirrors Prelude: Turning Visible Finding Lost Voices
Chapter 24: Do I Dare to Become Visible?
24.1 What Kind of Mother Will This Group Be?
24.1.1 Session 1
24.2 If I Throw Myself Into This Process, Am I Going to Become Crazier or Healthier?
24.2.1 Session 2
24.3 If I Show Myself, Am I Going to Be
Accepted or Rejected?
24.3.1 Sessions 3 and 4
24.3.2 Session 5
Chapter 25: Becoming Visible
25.1 Is It Safe for the Baby to Be Born?
25.1.1 Session 6
25.2 The Swaddled Baby
25.2.1 Session 7
25.2.2 Session 8
25.3 The Angry Baby
25.3.1 Session 9
25.3.2 Session 10
25.3.3 Sessions 11 to 14
Chapter 26: Making More Noise
26.1 Im Not Hiding
26.1.1 Session 15
26.2 Im Not Running Away
26.2.1 Session 16
26.3 Leaving It Behind
26.3.1 Sessions 17 to 19
26.3.2 Session 20
26.3.3 Session 21
26.3.4 Session 22
26.4 Shout for Help
26.4.1 Session 23
Chapter 27: Visible and Not Scared
27.1 Listen to MeLook at Me
27.1.1 Session 24
27.2 Liberation
27.2.1 Session 25
27.3 Broken Is Healed
27.3.1 Session 26
Chapter 28: Exploring Marys Dreams and Images
28.1 Babies
28.2 Houses
Chapter 29: Closure
Chapter 30: Final Words
Ready to Jump
After Flight
List of References
Appendix
List of Figures
List of Pictures
List of Tables
In GAMT, the role of the music therapist is to find ways of making the best therapeutic use of clients feelings, thoughts, bodily sensations, dreams, and images created through music. Images created during improvisation or therapeutic music listening can be seen as part of unconscious intersubjective and interpersonal processes within the group.
