The “Musical Life Panorama”: Paper for the VIII World Congress of Music

(2011). Memories from the VIII World Congress of Music Therapy. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 11(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/592/463 The “Musical Life Panorama” – A Music Therapy method for diagnosis and therapy of emotional and social realities by Dr. Isabelle Frohne-Hagemann, Berlin World congress for Music Therapy, Hamburg 1996 Before the break, we heard some informative ideas from Dr. Maaz on the dissonances in the unification process between East and West Germany and, on the basis of these ideas, I would like now to bridge the gap to music therapy. The question here is what contribution we music therapists can make not only to restoring health to sick individuals, but also to a sick society. The ideas sketched out by Dr. Maaz clearly show us that music therapy urgently has to get out of its ivory tower of “pure” psychotherapy, into the debate with its specific context in society. My feeling is that we – or at any rate we in West Germany – pay far too little attention in our therapies to diseases, crises and disturbances that arise not only from personal relationships that have gone wrong in the course of our development, but very importantly also from changes in society (e.g. unemployment, changes in social values, etc.). Work with MLP gives us an opportunity here to pay proper regard to these aspects. This is a way of combining psycho-therapeutic and socio-therapeutic work. The term “Life Panorama” comes from Hilarion Petzold (cf. Petzold, 1993) and relates to biographical work in integrative therapy. From the present, we look back on the whole wide panorama of our life development, back into the past and forwards into the anticipated future, in order to understand ourselves in our identity, in our life in its entirety. In the course of that process, we look at individual stations of life in the form of cameo portraits, but always paying regard (2011). Memories from the VIII World Congress of Music Therapy. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 11(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/592/463 – 2 – to the societal and social context and the time in which we grew up. I have used and modified this concept for Integrative Music Therapy, which I have developed and thave been teaching at the Fritz Perls Institute since 1984, and would like to give you an example of this in a project which I have been conducting with a group of East Berlin women, with whom I have worked for three evenings specifically with MLP. Mrs Kollacks will then give her presentation, going into the details of MLP in individual music therapy which I cannot cover here. MLP emphasises experience with various kinds of music which have taken on emotional significance in the course of our lives. The effect of music is always dependent upon context and mood. It is never significant “in itself”. Music is always linked with emotionally significant events and periods in our development, and releases in the memory the feelings that were linked with the specific situations and events in our lives at the time. Thus if we want to look at our development, recollection with the aid of music has an important integrative role to play. If a client remembers and recalls “his” or “her” music, this inevitably brings his or her own story to life. That is how work with MLP makes it possible to obtain a synoptic overview of the client's life and a synergetic panorama of all the important events in it. This cameo work also makes it possible to work through terrible events in such a way as to inject meaning into them, and also to (re-)create awareness of healing experiences which had been forgotten. Some of my colleagues in Germany, such as Karin Schumacher, Fritz Hegi and Dorothea Muthesius, likewise make use of musical biographies of their patients in their music therapy. Unlike their approaches, MLP as taught in Integrative Music Therapy also contains an active improvising component. In group therapy, we suggest a relaxed discussion of certain subjects (e.g. which pieces of music or what kinds of music have been important in the course of the patient's life), and this then provides points of departure for musical representation of certain phases or events in his or her life. (2011). Memories from the VIII World Congress of Music Therapy. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 11(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/592/463 – 3 – The patient is a kind of film composer and director, i.e. someone who is working with sensitivity and empathy to test, select and implement musical means so as to define the emotional characteristics of certain events and periods or scenes in life. As in the film, music which is presented in this way tells us what is felt, how it is felt, and how it should be interpreted by the feelings. MLP sets a socio-therapeutic accent within music therapy which seems to be becoming more and more an exclusively psycho-therapeutic method in West Germany. (In integrative music therapy, we even talk about four paths of healing.) Furthermore, there is an expansion in this country of active music therapy, which seems increasingly to become the exclusive form of music therapy. MLP here includes discussion and exchange about music as a value in itself and also improvisation in the sense of the creative solo improvisation (by contrast to the dyadic improvisation representing a relationship). Thus I understand the creative solo improvisation as a form of improvisation where the patient realizes his or her tonal ideas in a process of careful improvisation. The therapist, or just the group, give verbal support, and carry out the musical and instrumental instructions of the protagonist, like extras in a film. (The dyadic improvisation and group improvisation where the therapist joins in playing are in my view specific indications, so they are not always indicated, and not with all patients. I feel they should not be the exclusive or predominant features in music therapy.) In MLP and within it in the creative solo improvisation, I use a variant of the technique of maieutics used by Socrates. Maieutics (the word comes from the Greek for the art of the midwife) was a technique developed by Socrates, using a skillful series of questions and answers to elicit the correct (better: the wise) insights which are within a person. For example, I structure the discussion by asking certain introductory questions and questions of understanding, then I create links with the participants' experience and summarise and give a name to the subjects raised. (2011). Memories from the VIII World Congress of Music Therapy. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 11(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/592/463 – 4 – In the solo- improvisational part, I help the protagonist by asking questions and helping to select the instruments needed to orchestrate his or her life film. I accompany him/her into his/her world, and help to direct the performance, so as to give shape to the presentations or to achieve differentiation in them. The purpose is for the patient to really feel and taste the sound, shape and nature of the instrument selected for the symbolism intended, and to take seriously the emotions, moods, recollections, feelings and atmospheres that come up, and deliberately to set them into the proper relationship to the other instruments. The other group members play the instruments selected by the protagonist exactly as the protagonist demonstrates to them, so as not to mix their own contributions with those of the protagonist. I take great care to ensure that a participant who has played an active role as a protagonist in a group then first benefits from sharing (that is communication of their own emotional response) from the group, before getting feedback from me; this is intended to show that the subject presented is also an expression of the collective experience in the group, and to indicate in what way this is true. Group improvisations are also conducted. It is important to do these again and again, so as to generate coherence and to give expression to the group atmosphere, the development of relationships, etc. What is the benefit of MLP? In view of the shortness of the time allocated to me, I can only very briefly mention a few diagnostic and therapeutic benefits. First of all, the discussion in the group about the musical experiences and recollections: this opens people's eyes to socio-cultural belonging, or the marginalisation or exclusion of participants from certain groups; it gives information on emotional styles and climates, and the socialisation processes the group members have undergone; it shows them the personal and societal values in the group, and the resulting views of the world; it also shows them the patterns of experience, behaviour and relationships, and our picture of ourselves. The most primary goal, and the therapeutic goal, of any group must be to create a climate of coherence, openness, tolerance, mutual esteem and mutual trust. (2011). Memories from the VIII World Congress of Music Therapy. Voices: A World Forum For Music Therapy, 11(2). Retrieved from https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/592/463 – 5 – MLP offers a very good opportunity of doing so. Because joint discussion, and the sharing of musical experiences is an extremely sensitive matter – nowhere else are people more intolerant than in matters of aesthetics and questions of musical taste.

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