Aalborg Universitet Counter Transference in Music Therapy
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Aalborg Universitet Counter transference in music therapy Pedersen, Inge Nygaard Publication date: 2007 Document Version Early version, also known as pre-print Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Pedersen, I. N. (2007). Counter transference in music therapy: A phenomenological study on counter transference used as a clinical concept by music therapists working with musical improvisation in adult psychiatry. InDiMedia, Department of Communication, Aalborg University. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: April 29, 2017 countertransference in music therapy Inge Nygaard Pedersen Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dept. of Communication and Psychology. Aalborg University. Denmark. 2006 countertransference in music therapy A phenomenological study on counter transference used as a clinical concept by music therapists working with musical improvisation in adult psychiatry Declaration This dissertation is my own original work and has not previously been submitted elsewhere for the award of an academic qualification or a higher degree. Inge Nygaard Pedersen Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dept. of Communication and Psychology. Aalborg University. Denmark. 2006 Design og layout af for- og bagside: Kirsten Bach Larsen Design og opsætning at tekster: Kirsten Bach Larsen Amendments Amendments Proposed Amendments for the PhD-Dissertation: “Counter transference in music therapy”. A phenomenological study on counter transference used as a clinical concept by music therapists working with musical improvisation in adult psychiatry. Point 1 of proposed amendments. To be added at page 274 in category no. 3. in 5.1. In this study the main research question and sub questions are concerned with counter transference as a phenomenon that is part of the dynamic of the therapist/patient relationship. This phenomenon is experienced by the therapist as a reaction to the patient’s transference, and it is ex- perienced with different dimensions. As in psychoanalytical therapy, counter transference in music therapy is primarily unconscious and persists either for a shorter or longer period of time before it is recognized as occurring. Once it comes into the thera- pist’s awareness, it informs the therapist and in so doing, may be used intentionally as a ‘therapeutic tool’. For this specific reason I asked the interviewees to describe what was occurring in the two sessions before and the two sessions after the session in which the counter transference experience was recognized. In the interview situations a lot of emphasize was put on the moment of recognizing what was already there and what already influenced a new direction in the musical improvisation, and in the therapeutic process. Often this recognition emerged as a surprise, and often it emerged in an embodied form. For the same reason many of the created composite structural categories have the word ‘moment’ included in the titles. These titles are again mir- rored in the composite themes (see p. 277) which form the creation of the global distilled essence (see p. 295) of the counter transference ex- perience, and this is the final result of this study (see p. 299). It could sound here as if the moment of recognition is identical with the total experience of counter transference. This is not the intention of my use of the term. To clarify this confusion of words I would like to define what is meant by “moment of counter transference”. The word “moment” emerged from the description that the inter- viewees gave of the client’s session where they recognised what the counter transference was. The interviewees identified this moment during the interview in reference to a specific experience during a client’s session, reporting it in a number of ways including surprising moments in body feelings, emotions, and in changes in the musical improvisation. It is to be seen as an active part of the counter trans ference experience that serves as a source for later reflection of counter transference that identifies the characteristics that occurred at the time, which links it into a the larger context of the therapy process. This ‘moment of counter transference’ is a finding from this study. Thus it has to be seen as something different from using the term ‘the now moment’ or ‘the present moment’ (Stern 2004), where the issue is about a way of being present that suddenly intensified the meeting of two or more people in a kind of micro momental world of tacit events, and where the object is observation of mother/infant relationships at a micro level. I talk about these differences later in the discussion chapter 6.9. (see p. 365). In this chapter I also discuss that what is confusing here is that counter transference can be understood, and is understood in this study, as an important and intense ‘meeting’, which can be lived out in a short period of time. But in this study it is a presupposition that the therapist’s empathic identification with the patient and the patient’s transference is present in order to create the possibility of the meeting being able to emerge as a product of the therapist’s counter transference reaction. i Amendments Point 2 of proposed amendments To be added at page 301 by the end of the first paragraph. For all parts of the discussion chapter it is important for me to state that this is a study with only four subjects, and even if there is a great degree of consistency among the composite themes, there is no intention to sug- gest that these experiences can or should be generalised. The experiences reported are not the only kind of experiences that might indicate a ‘mo- ment of counter transference’. A phenomenological study never asserts generalisation, because there is a fundamental acceptance that each indi- vidual is different in their lived experience. The phenomenological pro- cess looks for similarities and differences, not for generalisations. What I found out from this study is that people can identify ‘moments of counter transference’ this way, but there may be many more ways in which people describe this experience. Future research or findings from clinical supervision could enable others to identify and report other types of experiences. Point 3 of proposed amendments To be added at page 233 by the end of the first paragraph. One could ask if it would not be more ‘objective’ to leave out my own interview when deciding on what data should be included. As this study is a phenomenological study which looks at the lived experience of counter transference for the participants in the study, it was crucial that I, as the researcher, have experienced the phenomenon myself as deeply as pos- sible. From this perspective including my own interview can be seen as a component of the phenomenological process where my own interview can be seen as an extended epoche, where I have addressed my own beliefs about the phenomenon of the study. Being that detailed in my own understanding of the phenomenon helps me being sensitive to de- tails in other participant’s subjective experiences. Additionally my own interview was important to include in order to engage my own experience with the phenomenological analysis of others and in order to draw some similarities and differences through making connections with the first five chapters. The analysis of my own inter view also helped me refine the questions for the participants in the study. ii Point 4 of proposed amendments The process of distilling the interviews derives from indwelling the mean- ing units of the person’s interview as described in detail in the method chapter. The focus of this phenomenological study is the lived experience of the participants, and therefore I decide to let the progression as report- ed stay in the order in which the themes emerged during analysis. The progression of the categories and themes was not put in order of priority for any theoretical reasons, because they emerged from the ana- lysis of the interview. If the theoretical understanding should be prior- itised for any reason, other things could as well be prioritised for other reasons. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those people who have supported me in the process of exploring and completing this doctoral thesis. Over the years I have written a few scholarly books, and many chapters and articles, but this research was my first experience with a systematic, formalised and supervised study. I very warmly want to thank my supportive super- visors professor Tony Wigram and professor Denise Grocke for having guided me carefully through this process. They surely have given me space for my own ideas, though still provided the necessary challenge to bring me through the process and to come to an end. It has been a very fruitful process. They are both very professional and together they cover the whole spectrum of research methods in music therapy. They have both been very inspiring in their input, be it suggestions or com- ments to the chapters or discussions of the method and analysis.