I received an email from a sweet Year 11 student today, as academics often do, asking me to elaborate on my research to help with her question ‘How does heavy metal music influence adolescent behaviour?’ Sometimes it takes me months to get enough space to reply to these mails, but thanks to a very productive long-haul flight back from Europe, and a state of jet-lag that keeps me awake at night, I was inspired to construct her a research narrative. I enjoyed piecing it together enormously, and share it here for posterity and anyone who is interested apart from me:)
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Thanks for your question. I have written a bit of an explanation based on different research I have done and have included references to the articles where I have published these ideas formally and with more detail and reference to the work of many others.
It was a small study of 113 teenagers in Melbourne that really got me interested in this topic. I have always advocated for freedom of choice in relation to adolescent's music, but parents and psychiatrists often asked me why. I argued it as a critical form of identity expression that is essentially healthy, but these adults often pointed to individual teenagers they knew who seemed to make themselves feel worse through their music listening habits. So when I did this study, I asked young people to describe how they felt before listening, what music they chose to listen to, and how they felt after. It was a survey, so it had its limitations, but the results suggested that some metal fans were more likely to make themselves feel worse through listening than fans of other music genres. Since this contradicted my own beliefs, and confirmed the opinions that others had asked me to consider, I decided to do more research.
McFerran, K., Garrido, S., O’Grady, L. Grocke, D. & Sawyer, S. (2014 – online first). Examining the relationship between self-reported mood management and music preferences of Australian teenagers, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, doi:10.1080/08098131.2014.908942 ) (EMAIL ME IF YOU NEED A COPY)
The next thing I did was a systematic review of the literature to see how other researchers had investigated this phenomenon. I knew lots of people had found ‘correlations’ between listening to what North and Hargreaves call ‘problem music’ and negative outcomes, but I believed, from my experiences as a music therapist, that music didn’t cause negative outcomes. I felt that it reflected mental health, more than caused mental health problems. So I challenged some of the ways that studies had been done and attempted to show that it wasn’t the type of music that was influential, but rather the state of mental health of the person doing the listening. This might ring true for you, since you might listen to a song that makes you feel really fantastic, but another one of your friends might have a different impression of the song. In my experience, people’s personal preferences and associations with songs are far more powerful than the musical elements themselves. So it is not so much about how ‘music effects the brain’, but how ‘we use music to influence our emotions’.
McFerran, K., Garrido, S. & Sarrikallio, S. (2013). A critical interpretive synthesis of the relationship between music and adolescent mental health, Youth and Society, doi:10.1177/0044118X13501343 (EMAIL ME IF YOU NEED A COPY)
When the first study above got published, I received lots of hate mail from metal fans who told me that music had saved their lives, and not made them depressed. I tried to explain that was the point I was making too, but the popular press had reported that my study showed metal music ‘caused’ depression – which it didn’t. It was a bit hurtful at the time, but I got to write a few blogs for some metal magazines, which was cool (just google 'katrina mcferran' and 'metal' – the metalsucks and metalinsider pieces were written by me, some of the others are also interesting, and often harsh), and I also got the chance to respond to lots of metal fans from around the world individually. Seven of them agreed to take part in my next study, where I asked them to describe how they had used metal music in their youth, which often revealed stories of empowerment and connectedness, as well as the occasional reference to intensifying negative feelings.
Hines, M. and McFerran, K. S. (2014), ‘Metal made me who I am: Seven adult men reflect on their engagement with metal music during adolescence’, International Journal of Community Music (Special Edition on Metal Music), 7 (2), 205–222, doi: 10.1386/ ijcm.7.2.205_1 (EMAIL ME IF YOU NEED A COPY)
I then interviewed a group of 40 young Australians to ask how they were using music in their lives, and was particularly interested in whether they ever used it to make themselves feel worse. This time what I discovered was that young people did not want to talk about the times when they felt worse; they really wanted to focus on how music made them feel better. But when we really tried to think of times, they were often there, and the more we talked about it, the more I began to realise that this was a very unconscious process. The young people often didn’t think about how they were choosing music and instead, relied on the music to make them feel better. It seemed that if people were depressed, this strategy was more risky because they might be drawn to music that intensified their unhappiness and actually made them feel worse. So it seemed important to see if this was true.
McFerran, K. & Saarikallio, S. (2013). Depending on music to feel better: Being conscious of responsibility when appropriating the power of music, The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41 (1), 89-97, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2013.11.007 (FREE ACCESS ONLINE)
My colleagues and I then designed 13 questions to ask young people about how they were using music and discovered that the answers they gave could be correlated with a measure of depression called the K10. This seemed to suggest that there was a connection between the mental health of young people and the ways they were using music. Note that I continue to emphasise the ‘uses of’ music, rather than suggesting music ‘effects’ young people. I have come to believe that music has an inherent potential (some people say affordances) that is enacted when we use it (the word appropriation is even better than ‘use', but most people don’t know what it means). So it has power, but the way the power is used depends on the person listening or making music. If you have a tendency to ruminate for example, you will probably use music as a way of ruminating – by playing the same song over and over, but not reaching any different conclusions. If you tend to distract yourself from your problems, you will probably find that music is a great way to take your mind off things, which is the opposite of ruminating. It is a complex interaction between the individual (who exists in a cultural context that influences them reciprocally) and their music (which is also culturally shaped – so nothing occurs in a vacuum).
Saarikallio, S., McFerran, K. S., & Gold, C. (2015). Development and validation of the Healthy-Unhealthy Uses of Music Scale (HUMS). Child and Adolescent Mental Health, online first. doi: 10.1111/camh.12109 (FREE ACCESS ONLINE)
In one of my latest articles on this topic we ask people to think about how music is not always used for good. It seemed appropriate to write this with a German colleague, since Hitler was one of the people who knew this better than anyone. In this article we suggest that music can both prevent violence, support people who have experienced violence, and also, promote violence by encouraging people to vent and intensify in ways that are aggressive. Music therapists work with people to ensure that their experiences with music are safe, and if people explore difficult emotions, they do so in relationship with someone they can trust and who will help them to process the material. Many people use music independently, without the need for a therapist, but some people benefit from the support of a therapeutic relationship, and music is a very powerful force for change in this context.
McFerran, K.S. & Wölfl, A. (2015). Music, Violence and Music Therapy with Young People in Schools: A non-refereed Position Paper. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 15(2). doi:10.15845/voices.v15i2.831 (FREE ACCESS ONLINE)
The young people I have worked with in group music therapy have often reported on the benefits of expressing their emotions and feeling better in our sessions together. They describe how difficult it is to find safe ways and people to share emotions and use the opportunity of therapy to process complex feelings. This has been particularly true in my work with bereaved adolescents, who sometimes struggle with sadness and anger because of their grief and loss. It has been wonderful to watch and help young people to sing and play, write songs, and improvise music that allows them to achieve their goals in therapy.
McFerran, K. (2011). Music therapy with bereaved youth: Expressing grief and feeling better, The Prevention Researcher (Adolescent Grief and Bereavement Special Edition), 18 (3), 17-20. (EMAIL ME IF YOU NEED A COPY).
So thanks for asking for a summary of my work – I really enjoyed pulling all that together. In fact, I might publish it on my blog, since it is a pretty good summary of one of my streams of research to date. I hope it answers your question.
Katz Meanderings
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Thinking about men in my life
I have always been a fan of men, and during my adolescent
years actually found that I favoured the company of men rather than my female
peers. At that time, the women seemed
more complex and difficult to predict, and the power games that were at play
were beyond my ability to negotiate. I
had no female friends for an entire year of my schooling because of some female
bitching that I never understood. I then
gradually and carefully re-built a mixed friendship group, but it wasn’t until
I was in my late 20s that I finally found a woman that I could confidently call
my best friend. This was a turning
point, and maturity, combined with motherhood has bought me back to women, and
I am deeply indebted to the women friends in my life for their love, support
and flexibility. In addition, it seems
that life is a long game, and where women were perhaps more complex at the
onset of adulthood, it is middle age that seems to challenge men.
These relationships between men and women have been of
renewed interest to me lately as I have turned my attention to using music to
end gender-based violence against women and girls. Power has been an ongoing theme in my
exploration of this topic, and I have been reflecting on my own experiences in
relation to the theoretical and advocacy literature that I have been
consuming. In doing this, it occurs to
me that there are two types of men in my
world at the moment. There is the
traditional man and the equitable man.
They often appear the same based on how they look, dress and talk; I
have only been able to distinguish between the two types based on how they
respond when I assert my own power. Some
men tolerate it until it reaches a point where they can’t anymore. Others enjoy it and are happy to switch
between being the leader and being directed, as suits the situation and each
person’s strengths and interests.
I think the traditional, tolerant men believe they are good
and fair men. They accept that I earn more money than them, although they secretly
wonder how it happened and quietly feel that I have benefitted from ‘women’s
lib’ in the same way that they have been downtrodden by it. They notice
that I work, but they assume this must be to the detriment of my children and
do not, for a minute, consider that their father should have to compensate for
any absences that occur due to work.
This is most actively demonstrated when I travel for work and people say
‘oh, that must be tough on your husband’, rather than, ‘oh, your husband must
benefit from the income you bring in that allows him to pursue his passions;
nice to see that you get some benefits too.’
At a dinner party recently, an older woman friend of mine made the point
quite nicely when she said ‘don’t you dare congratulate him for drying the
dishes, it is the only thing he does.’
She loves her husband, and this was not intended as a criticism; rather,
it was a reminder about equity.
There is little emphasis on gender equity in Australian
culture, so the tolerant men I know are constantly congratulated for their
contemporary stance. “Oh, that is sooo
wonderful that you dropped the kids to school today, how does your work react
when you come in late?” In contrast, the attitude to me is “Oh, you’re dressed
up, do you have to go in to work again?
How do you juggle it all!” This is also enacted in a myriad of ways that
attract excellent social commentary from the young feminist women I read and
speak with. It was painful to watch the
Australian police respond to the rape of a young woman in a park during the day
by saying that women
should not walk alone in parks. Why not acknowledge that we have a problem
with male violence?!? Similarly, there
is a legal clause that allows men to claim that they were provoked
to murder their estranged spouse because she did something deserving like … oh
you know, challenge their masculinity.
There are many little acts in Australian culture that support the idea
that men are already being generous
to women by allowing them to have a seat at the table. In some places, women are even allowed to
speak. But, to continue the metaphor,
women are not yet allowed to speak if they disagree with the men at the table,
and they certainly should never try and suggest they may be the cause of the
problem.
Feminists who choose to speak about women’s rights on social
media have shares the horrendous
comments made by men when they dare to suggest that male behaviour is
inappropriate. How dare we protest that
a child’s computer game routinely includes raping women as part of the
chase! Surely it’s ok to have magazines
in supermarkets that promote
rape culture by telling young men to ignore women’s protests and help
themselves to the action!?! As the
hyperlinks in this blog suggest, women are beginning to protest against a
number of male privileges that have been in place, without being questioned,
for a long time. The road is rocky, and
many men have been getting angry.
That is the experience in my life too. I am allowed to go so far, but at a certain
point, the tolerant men begin to put on the brakes. They begin to question my motives. They begin
to blame me when their wives also start to protest. They credit a fellow man’s incongruent descriptions
of me above what they know from their own encounters with me. They make intentionally sexist jokes just to
get a rise out of me. These men are often
‘snags’ (in the old language) and ‘hipsters’ (in the new language). Perhaps they do not realise that they are enacting
the traditional rules of men having the power and choosing when they distribute
it, and when they don’t. As with all of us in a privileged position, they
cannot see what I am talking about when I suggest their position is not
equitable.
On the other hand, I increasingly meet a new brand of
man. These men have their own internal
power. They do not need to take it from
those around them. They have an abundance
attitude which suggests that there is plenty more power where that came
from. These men that I know love women. They love powerful women. They love
vulnerable women. They love other, equity-oriented men, and interestingly, they
can smell the men who still want to control the behaviours of others. I am yet to develop such a good sense of
smell, but I am working on it. The smell
of the new kind of man is tantalising, I must say. Long live great men. May my own marvellous son
grow up to be one.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Using music to stop violence against women and girls
In 2015 I pledge to make a difference in stopping violence
against women and girls. After a long
period of contemplation over the new year period, it dawned on me that this was
the next natural step to take in making my unique contribution to the
world. I have been grappling with issues
of power and control for a long time – who has it and who wants it and what
they do with it. When I took a moment to
look over my previous blogs, the steps leading to this place were pretty clear. Power and
love was an exploration of the ways that music therapists frequently deny
their own power in professional relationships.
Reconsidering
resilience was the beginning of my awakening to the power of societal
responsibility and how resilience is not just located inside an
individual. Are
you my client challenged the words that music therapists accept as normal,
without acknowledging the power that language has. Thinking
about servant leadership followed this through into thinking about collaboration
and sharing power when you get it, which I then considered in relation to the
possibility that mutually
empowering conditions is what music therapists create. And slowly, I have started to release a
little bit of rage about the abuse of power that occurs in the world, regularly
posting horrendous accounts of violence against women and girls on my facebook
page and that led me to return to
Feminism.
So it is, and so it shall be. I’ve finally connected the dots and connected
with my anger and examined by beliefs. I’m
writing a position paper on Music, Violence and Young People in Schools that
will be out soon. But in the meantime, I
find it absolutely unacceptable that we continue to tolerate the systematic and
persistent abuse of power in relation to women and girls - as well as anyone
else who isn’t from the dominant form of a white, Anglo-Saxon man. As I read
through Laurie Penny’s ‘Unspeakable
Things’, I was blown away by the clarity of this young British Feminist. She could name the ways that the dominant
view on how men need to behave is systematically abusing all of us. The gender norms she powerfully describes are
destroying all of us, including the men who don’t fit the mould, as well as
those that do. I am choosing to focus on how these accepted beliefs are
impacting women and girls, and I trust that others will also join in the mutiny
and bring all the other, equally important perspectives, to the table.
So the question becomes, how can I make my
contribution? Over the past few years, I
have been working with a wonderful group of people on the MusicMatters project. We tried to expand our vision for what music
therapists could contribute to mainstream schools by sharing what we know about
how to use music to achieve wellbeing and connectedness. It’s been a beautiful project and we learned
a lot from it. And now I’m ready to take
a bigger step, and to stop playing nice.
By focusing on building school’s musical resources, I had fallen into my
usual pattern of being strengths-oriented, and deficiency blind. Schools reflect social norms, and the
dominant social norm in my country is an unequal distribution of power. White men are usually the principals, white
women are often taking a lot of responsibility and getting some power in
return, other adults from different cultural groups and younger ages are given a
little bit of power, and this is used to manage the young ones so that they can
learn. These students then re-enact the
same power hierarchies. Yes, I’m generalising, but as Laurie Penny argues, just
because a generalisation doesn’t apply to everyone, it doesn’t mean it’s not
true.
So instead of going sweetly in to schools to discover how
music can build on their strengths, I’m going boldly in to schools to uncover the power
imbalances through music. My plan is to
begin the investigation by getting groups of young people to write songs about
the balance of power they perceive between boys and
girls, women and men. Since I’m a
researcher, I’m going to analyse the main themes that emerge in those songs and
see if there’s anything in particular that comes up when we use music to frame the discussion. I’m guessing that
objectification might be a feature (think music videos), and I’m wondering about stereotypical gender based behaviours (think rock stars).
Then, I will go back to schools, better informed, and use music to shape a heavier discussion, about
how power imbalances underpin abuse and violence, and to explore exactly where that
line is between men feeling that they are meant to be powerful and in control, and women being
raped, murdered and disposed of. Should
be some interesting musicking, huh?
The way I see it, it’s all in the name of inspiring more
mutually empowering relationships, which has been my personal and professional
goal for a long time. But I’ve had
enough of playing it nice. It’s not
working. Women and girls are dying all
around us. Did you know that intimate
partner violence is the most common type of violence against women, affecting
30 per cent of women worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Or that it is the leading contributor to the
death, disability and ill-health of Australian women aged 15-44? Or that one in four children are exposed to
domestic violence? Or that one in three women have experienced physical or sexual
violence at the hands of somebody they know?
Really, did you know that????? Think about it.
It suits the system and it suits the economy to keep this
balance of power skewed in one direction, and I’m not buying it. It’s time to music up, people. Who’s in?
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Retreating in order to Re-Emerge
I had the opportunity to attend a retreat
in New Zealand this Easter, where the leader was a spiritual and relationship
guru by the name of Stephanie Dowrick.
As a self-confessed self-help book junky, I have followed Stephanie’s
work for over a decade (with special thanks to Jodie Webster who has provided
me with a number of books from her publishing house – http://www.allenandunwin.com/), and
have been longing to attend the retreat at Mana for the past five years. So I prepared diligently for the experience
by spending some time in contemplation before I left and taking some areas for
personal development with me that I wanted to address. And I was not disappointed.
Stephanie’s greatest contributions to the
discourse about relationships have been in emphasising kindness and the
importance of choosing happiness (see ‘Kndness and other acts of love’ and
‘The Universal Heart’ at https://www.qbd.com.au/search.htm?q=stephanie%20dowrick ). This intersects with her inter-faith
spirituality, which focuses clearly on love and compassion as the necessary
characteristics for an evolving world (see ‘Seeking the Sacred’ and ‘Heaven on
Earth’). And it was precisely in the intersection
of relationships and spiritual abundance that I found what I was looking for.
As a survivor of a failed marriage, I feel
that I have journeyed deep into the terrain of interpersonal relationships
within my own life, as well as exploring it to better my practice as a music
therapist. Personally, I explored the self-help literature with the intention
of saving my relationship, and then later, with the intention of exiting it in
the most positive way. I have sought
teachings from a range of sources, including the very beautiful Conscious
Uncoupling process that Gwyneth and Chris recently invoked in the ending of
their own relationship (http://evolvingwisdom.com/consciousuncoupling/free-online-class/). And importantly, my work with the related Feminine
Power group (http://evolvingwisdom.com/consciousuncoupling/free-online-class/)
helped me to develop the personal strength I needed to respond to my
circumstances with vision and inspiration, rather than feeling defeated.
What Stephanie Dowrick reminded me of this
Easter was my need to return home with a renewed commitment to compassion. Given my personal history, as well as my work
as a therapist with an increasing interest in manifesting greater equity and
justice in the word, I was particularly moved by her reflections on how to
integrate compassion into situations that lack harmony. She responded to our deep need for insights
on how to deal with conflict by asking us to consider the following.
When the bell of disharmony rings loudly, it asks
‘what can I learn here?’ and also, ‘what is disrupting the harmony on the other
side?’.
Instead of reacting in a defensive, or an
offended way to conflict, she asked us to bring our willingness to learn
something to the encounter. Instead of
focusing on our own hurt, or blaming the other person, she asked us to look
deep within ourselves to find a response that combines love with an intelligent
curiosity.
Whereas I had previously wondered if
Stephanie was just a bit too
positive, the Easter retreat revealed that this was an incorrect
perception. She was well able to
understand the need to make choices and take actions to move out of situations
where mutual respect is not possible.
She did not suggest avoiding conflict, but rather that we need to move
gently into the territory where conflict exists in order to discern whether it
is possible to bring a mutual sense of ownership to the situation. She spoke about the ways that moving beyond
defensive reactions can increase intimacy, particularly when we bring a
willingness to understand the needs of the other in equal measure with our own
needs. And she emphasised the importance
of honouring our own boundaries when the other/s is not ready for
mutuality. She asked us to notice when
the situation was more than we can bear, and to be kind to ourselves by moving
away from those conditions where moving towards has not resulted in a change.
There were bounteous spiritual references
throughout the weekend, and Stephanie repeatedly shared the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh and
Jesus, as well as the music of Krishna Das and her own colleague, Kim Cunio. We meditated often, spent much time in
silence, and I personally trekked up the mountain on a daily basis to spend
time in contemplation of the gorgeous west coast of the North Island in New
Zealand. I am pleased to report that my commitment to
compassion has not reduced since my return, and I have chosen to bring it to my
workplace as I communicate with students and negotiate the politics of
leadership in the university sector.
It is always much easier to hold on to such
loving feelings when surrounded by others who are similarly determined, as we
were on the retreat, but I do believe that it is the way I grapple with the
real life challenges of being in relationship with others that truly defines
who I am. It is true that I have
struggled and not always succeeded, but this does not deter me from my trying. For
me, spiritual faith allows me to remember that I am only human, and that it is
not expected that I should be perfect – that is the terrain of the Gods. So I go imperfectly forward with less defence
than ever; knowing that I have the inner strength to handle pain, rejection and
failure when it comes and that I do not need to live in fear of it by trying to
avoid it. Instead, I go forward with love and
compassion.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
It's just not fair mate. Why we need more music in schools.
I am passionate about the fact that music can create mutually empowering conditions within which people have the opportunity to flourish. If there is no decent foundation for engaging in music together, then everything begins to get unbalanced. The situation in Australia is far from equitable, with a significant discrepancy between the possibilities for music that are available to those in publicly funded and user-pays schools. It sucks. So I wrote a little piece about it.
http://theconversation.com/class-matters-when-it-comes-to-music-education-22956
http://theconversation.com/class-matters-when-it-comes-to-music-education-22956
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Return to feminism
As the amount of time grows from the end of my marriage, I
am more clearly able to see some of the deeply rooted beliefs that had taken
hold during those 17 years of relationship.
One of them was turning my back on feminism, which I can see now was
actually a break, rather than a conclusion.
I have spent some time in the past few days reflecting on my
relationship with feminism and being pleasantly surprised by how important it
has been to me, not least because my mother was a feminist of the 60s and 70s.
During my years living in a residential college at the
University of Melbourne, I became the representative of the colleges on the
Universities Feminist Committee. To this
day I am not sure how that happened, and I remember feeling utterly
under-qualified for the position but determined to learn as much as I could.
This experience of being thrust into positions that seem far beyond my
abilities has been a recurring pattern in my life, but with the Feminist
Committee, as with many other situations, I seemed to find my way and
ultimately began to identify as a feminist.
This sometimes involved battling with the assumptions of the other women
on the committee who felt that all women living in residential colleges were
unduly privileged and therefore uninformed and un-critical. I felt this was unjust and oppressive and
told them so, and some of the members began to treat me with a little more
respect. Of course, there was some truth
in their accusations, but I was right to suggest that women excluding other
women from potential growth opportunities was a small-minded response.
During that time I purchased all the contemporary
pop-feminist literature that was available, including Susan Faludi’s ‘Backlash: The undeclared war against women’,
and Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’
and ‘Fire with Fire’, as well as the
less politically correct ‘Get your tongue
out of my mouth, I’m kissing you goodbye’ and an older text by Colette
Dowling ‘The Cinderella Complex’. I also stole some books from my mother’s
collection: ‘The Hite Report’ and ‘The Women’s Room’. My social work lecturer encouraged us to read
Foucault’s ‘The History of Sexuality’
and I remember Virginia Wolf’s ‘Orlando’
coming out as a movie during this time.
All in all, it was a reasonable beginning and I was well supported by my
‘privileged’ friendship networks to challenge assumptions and make loud
speeches at dinner parties, even if I only had a few pieces to string together.
Over the next two decades I began to question feminism however,
and I can see now that this was caused by the incongruence between the ideals
of the discourse and the realities of my life.
I clearly remember thinking ‘What’s the point of all this feminist
reading, it’s just making me terribly unhappy.
I can’t live up to these standards’.
After years of quiet raging, I turned my back on critical beliefs and
turned towards more positive readings. I
reignited my passion for Humanism and it’s emphasis on unconditional positive
regard – the opposite of holding critical perspectives. I imbibed every positive psychology text that
supported my individual choosing of happiness, and I focused on flourishing and
creativity. And I reignited my faith,
moving through Buddhism to Integral Spirituality. These were not wasted decades. I learned a great deal from these scholars
and I am particularly grateful to have developed a capacity to take
responsibility for my own part in any challenging situation, rather than simply
blaming others.
In the year before my marriage ended however, I discovered a
new discourse. My studies of Ken
Wilber’s integral thinking led me to two women (one American, one Australian)
who had developed an on-going conversation called Feminine Power – Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas. This on-line group provided me with the
impetus to value the contribution that women are here to make in the
world. The focus on mutually empowering
relationships and choosing a calling that is bigger than individual happiness literally
changed my world. Learning to value
myself again allowed me to make the important decisions that I had been trying
to run away from.
It still took some time to come back to critical feminism
however. I recall participating in a
Feminist Music Therapy symposium in Argentina in 2008 where I declared that
there was no more need for feminism and that our mother’s had achieved all they
could through this discourse (ahhh, it is a humiliating memory, I must
admit). But lately I have found myself
tentatively poking around the edges of feminism again. I have bought more books, read more articles,
and allowed myself to be truly appalled by the statistics about the treatment
of women in the world – supported by viewing many TED talks that provide
important information about the issues facing many women in countries around
the globe. In my own privileged world at
the University I have participated in women’s leadership forums where the facts
are also oppressive and where male domination is still the status quo. And finally I have found my way back to
feminist theory. The opportunity to work with Sue Hadley as a Co-Editor of Voices: A
world forum for music therapy (along with Brynjulf Stige), has been
particularly inspiring. And so have many
women colleagues in my field and beyond – particularly the anti-oppressive work
being advocated by Sue Baines, and Randi Rolvsjord’s ‘Resource Oriented Music
Therapy’.
I am making a re-commitment to feminism in this summer-time
blog. I aspire to problematize my
research findings, and to shine light on the assumptions that underpin the
oppressions that impinge on people’s full participation. I recognize that my circle of influence is
limited, but I aim to contribute what I can and to support others to do what
they can. I take up Craig Hamilton’s
challenge (from the Integral Enlightenment group) – if not you, then who?
Monday, August 26, 2013
Mutually empowering conditions - is that what music therapists offer?
I was lucky enough to be invited to present a keynote paper
at the European Music Therapy Congress in Oslo this year. It was a huge honour and I took the
opportunity to think very carefully about what I have learned about music
therapy as a result of the various research projects I have read and conducted,
as well as my experiences in working as a music therapist, and the theoretical
frameworks that have influenced the ways I understand these things. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to condense
my thinking into a one-hour presentation, but luckily, a few hours on the
slopes of the beautiful Mt Hutt in the South Island of New Zealand helped me to
align with my intentions and a structure emerged that allowed my story to
unfold in a short time.
The key message I tried to impart was that music therapists
create ‘mutually empowering conditions’ when they engage participants from a
person-centered (Rogerian Humanistic) orientation. More than building positive relationships
with people, music therapists have the possibility to impact the environment
around players by changing the ways that they are seen and understood in that
context. Whereas traditional music
therapy practice emphasized the ‘sacred space’ around the therapeutic encounter
and sought private and confidential experiences (in line with psychodynamic
thinking), contemporary practice actively seeks engagement with the people and
systems that surround individuals. This
might begin with private ‘musicking’ experiences, but can often grow beyond the
walls of the therapy room for broader impact, as community music therapy
theorists such as Brynjulf Stige, Gary Ansdell and Mercedes Pavlicevic have
advocated.
The idea of mutuality has also become increasingly important
to me under the influence of Randi Rolvsjord’s writings about resource oriented
music therapy as well as the learnings from the Common Factors meta-analyses in
psychotherapy (particularly Scott Miller who presented a fascinating workshop
in Melbourne some years ago). I think
Randi has been able to name a particular quality that I always admire when I
read about the work of therapists who move me – Irvin Yalom for example, or
Andy Malekoff, or Reed Larson. It goes
further than having unconditional positive regard for the people we work with
and allows space for the contribution that we make as therapists. I think that
therapy is a mutual process that requires everyone to engage and commit, or it
just doesn’t help that much. For me,
it’s the opposite of the teachings from Neurologic Music Therapy school, where
the emphasis is on what the music therapist does to help, rather than the
people themselves being the ones who work hard to achieve that change. That said, I do think the notion of
‘empowering conditions’ can still encompass NMT, just not so much emphasis on
the mutual.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about what empowerment is, and
have come to a personal conclusion that being empowered means making good
choices. We often talk about offering
opportunities for choice and control in music therapy, and I think that what we
are referring to here is a part of creating mutually empowering
conditions. One of the stimulating PhD
scholars in our group, Lucy Bolger, has been stretching herself to try and work
out what we mean when we invoke a concept like empowerment. As a result, her descriptions of
collaborative processes truly capture the ways that music therapists who listen
carefully to what players want can create conditions that people choose to ‘buy
in’ to and therefore make an active contribution towards their own positive
growth. An important part of this is not
taking all the responsibility for making things ‘sound’ or look good and
successful. A wonderful woman called
Paula D’Arcy also captures this in a lecture with Richard Rohr that speaks to
empowerment – she describes how we cannot and should not ‘save’ people, but
should instead have faith that our destinies are mutually dependent and that
opportunities to realize what we all need will arise. To take that spiritual learning into a
therapeutic context means that we cannot and should not ‘help’ people, but
rather we should create conditions that encourage people to reach towards what
they need. This is similar to the
ecologically informed definition of resilience that Michael Ungar and Bruce Perry
offer, where it is partially the individual’s willingness to take steps towards
coping, but also the availability of a context that supports those steps and
provides something to step towards.
Anyway, the keynote went for an hour, and obviously there is
decades of thinking behind it, but I did want to share some of the ideas with
you all. What do you think? Mutually empowering conditions. It’s an interesting idea, right?
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