Group Analytic Music Therapy

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 intersubjective 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.

The book is divided into three parts: Part One sets the philosophical foundation of GAMT. The purpose is to provide a group psychotherapeutic context that will be explored in more detail in Parts Two and Three. Part Two presents the theory and method of GAMT and different characteristics of musical images. It discusses how dreams and images created during group analytic music therapy can be a unique source of clinical data. Part Three 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.

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Table of Contents

 

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)

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