From “This F***ing life” to “that's better” … in four minutes: an interdisciplinary study of music therapy's “present moments” and their potential for affect modulation

摘要

This article presents the findings of a preliminary interdisciplinary research project instigated by a group of three music therapists, a music psychologist and a psychiatrist. The group shared a professional and academic interest in music therapy's seeming ability to help patients experiencing severe affect dysregulation as a result of psychotic states to effectively modulate affect in a creative way within a surprisingly short time-span. The study takes a qualitative-phenemenological stance designed to elicit cross-professional descriptions/interpretations of clinical events from an exemplary single case of a woman with a psychotic illness. A strategic sample of two key events in the patient's music therapy provides the data, which are explored systematically and progressively in order to attend to the real-time micro-detail of the musical-clinical process in relation to the perceived outcome of affect modulation. Combined inductive and abductive approaches are pursued in an attempt to refine perceptions and descriptions of the phenomenon of “music therapy process and affect modulation” in relation to current inter-disciplinary theory - primarily by Trevarthen, Malloch, Stern and Schore - all of whom use musical analogies to characterize the real-time therapeutic process. We ask, reciprocally, how their theories can illuminate the mechanisms of the music-therapeutic process. The aim of this phenomenological study was not to produce definitive conclusions, but to sensitize inter-professional perceptions of this area, and to develop provisional theoretical formulations that could help assemble a conceptual platform on which to develop peer discussion, and hopefully a more sophisticated empirical investigation at a further stage.