Music, Meaning, and Emotion: a Case Study
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Luis Botella MUSIC, MEANING, AND EMOTION: A CASE STUDY Luis Botella FPCEE Blanquerna, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain This paper discusses the emotional power of music in the specific sense of its potential use as a means to achieve (a) emotional regulation and (b) meaning making in constructivist psychotherapy. A case study of a client for whom music was a significant part of his life and his psychotherapeutic process is discussed so as to exemplify the paper’s main thesis. Keywords: Music, emotional regulation, meaning making, personal construct psychology, constructivism . The emotional power of music has been recog- moil”. He described in detail how his marriage nized for centuries. In fact, music has always ended up in divorce two years before, when he been used primarily as a profound and imme- realized that his feelings towards his wife had diate means to evoke emotions, from the melan- changed and that he was not able to communi- cholic sadness of an aria to the patriotic pride of cate at a deep emotional level with her. They a national anthem. Given the significant role that both were in couple’s therapy for 10 months, but emotions play in psychotherapy in general and in Adam complained that his wife only made minor psychotherapeutic change in particular, it’s not changes in the relationship and returned to the surprising that sometimes, for some clients, mu- same communication difficulties in a matter of sic becomes a meaningful topic in therapy. days. Adam realized now how he had also been In fact there are a number of people that, de- contributing to such difficulties--basically by spite not being professional musicians, are ex- having renounced the possibility of any change tremely moved by music and for whom music many years ago. He said he had felt quite lonely play a paramount role. They are the kind of in the last years of his marriage, that he thought people whose life seems to have a soundtrack. his wife had become incapable of understanding They can easily remember the music that ac- his need of a more profound emotional commu- companied their most cherished memories, and nication and that this only got worse because of listening again to these particular pieces of mu- the need to focus constantly on the everyday sic can evoke in them profound emotional expe- needs of their children. Adam also said that he riences associated to such memories. loved his children immensely, and that his di- What follows is a case study of one such vorce made him feel somehow guilty and sorry client. My attempt in discussing this case is to for them, but that he thought it would be better illustrate to what extent music can sometimes be for them to see both their parents happy, even if incorporated into constructivist psychotherapy separated, than unhappy together. not only as therapeutic in itself, but as a vehicle Adam’s “emotional turmoil” was triggered by for meaning making and emotional regulation. a series of recent events that he described as fol- lows. After his divorce, he became acutely aware of his unfulfilled emotional needs and began to CASE STUDY look for support in some of his female friends. His relationship with one of them (Rachel) be- Adam is a 45 year old man. He works as a com- came more and more intimate to the point of his puter graphics designer for a large corporation. falling in love with her, and he was quite sure He is divorced and has four children aged 15, 12, that his feelings were mutual. However, these 9, and 5. He came to therapy initially because he feelings of mutual attraction and love were not felt he was in the middle of an “emotional tur- easy to incorporate into their previously friendly 74 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 6, 2009 Music, meaning, and emotion relationship because Rachel was just married and ics: (1) music and emotional regulation, and (2) in fact quite shocked by how things were evolv- song’s lyrics and meaning-making. ing between her and Adam—even if she could not deny that her feelings were certainly, and to a certain degree, mutual. So far, Adam and Ra- MUSIC AND EMOTIONAL REGULATION chel had not had sex, nor any other form of inti- mate physical contact, and they both were quite Regarding the first one, Adam described in detail reluctant to further intimacy until they could cla- in therapy how he was almost constantly listen- rify their relationship. ing to music even when working. He used to The significant role of music in Adam’s life wear his earphones when he walked to his office, and worldview became obvious to his therapist plug his MP3 into his computer loudspeakers as because of the frequent use Adam made of frag- soon as he reached his office, and turn his radio ments of song’s lyrics to make sense of his life, or CD player on whenever he was at home. He and because of his repeatedly referring to him- said that his mood could be quite transformed by self as an “80’s New Romantic”. Because of the music he was listening to, and his therapist such significance, I decided to make a deliberate invited him to carry on an experiment consisting and systematic use of music in Adam’s therapy. of increasing his awareness of what particular Of course this was not music therapy at all, but mood states could music evoke in him. So, rather an invitation to explicitly explore in thera- Adam was invited to pay attention during the py a domain of experience that our client clearly week to (a) his mood state previously to having felt was very meaningful. it changed by a particular song; (b) his mood Thus, it became clear in our sessions with state after that; and (c) what in the song he Adam (a) that he used music to regulate his thought could induce such a change. mood and emotional states; and that (b) many of Adam came to the next session with a consi- his favorite songs lyrics helped him to make derably large amount of information regarding sense of what was happening to him. It also be- this particular—keep in mind that he was almost came clear that Adam’s musical tastes excluded constantly listening to music and also almost classical music and jazz (he said he had not a constantly in the middle of profound emotional “trained ear” for these particular genres) and experiences. Adam and his therapist spent this were focused instead around pop rock in general, whole session in a deliberate effort to reduce the 80’s British “New Romantics” and specifi- such an amount of data to a manageable one. cally Duran Duran. Apart from this specific The therapist did this by using an ad hoc adapta- band, whose members are already into their for- tion of Grounded Theory Methodology (Glaser ties, some of the others that Adam listens to are & Strauss, 1967) consisting in grouping Adam’s made up of musicians almost 20 years younger mood states into a fewer series of superordinate than Adam, and in fact Adam and his children categories (together with Adam) by carefully share some of the same preferences. Neverthe- considering their commonalities. Because of the less, he does not feel at all a need to justify his clinical and applied focus of our work with liking rock bands of a younger generation, and Adam the method in this case did not go beyond he stated repeatedly in therapy that music is the ad hoc content analysis, but we have used the language of emotions and it transcends age, same procedure in a more systematic and com- gender, ethnicity, and even almost words. The plex way in our research projects. role of music in Adam’s life is so relevant, that The image that emerged is summarized in after reading Oliver Sacks’ book “Musicophilia” Table 1 . Some of the terms in the table need to (Sacks, 2007) he kept referring to himself jo- be more clearly defined because they are quite kingly as a “musicophilic”. idiosyncratic to Adam’s use of his personal con- I will focus my description of Adam’s thera- structs about music and songs. Such a more de- peutic process around these two interrelated top- tailed definition became possible because Adam’s therapist had a certain level of musical 75 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 6, 2009 Luis Botella knowledge and was able to help him identify faster tempo. This combination creates a propul- structural musical elements to make sense of sive rhythmic feel that almost inevitably makes what otherwise were pre-verbal constructs. listening active and motoric. He mentioned Thus, Adam was able to identify torch songs many examples of this, among them the more as sentimental love songs in which the singer dance oriented recent tracks produced by Ameri- laments a lost love. Typically, they are slow can rapper Timbaland for Duran Duran, like tempo songs with little or no intrusive instru- “Skin Divers”. mentation or production effects. Adam men- Love songs with a happy ending were accord- tioned Duran Duran’s “Someone Else not Me” ing to Adam those that celebrated the power of as prototypical of them. (A more detailed analy- love against all odds. In general, its main struc- sis of some of these song’s lyrics is included in tural difference with torch songs apart from the the next section of this paper). obvious one regarding lyrics, is that the tempo is usually faster and that both instrumentation and production effects create a more ecstatic and ro- Table 1: Adam’s description of his mood states mantic feeling.