My great sister, Music as Therapy

What Music therapy means to me and to my clients.
Monica Szabo - Psiholog
Scoala Speciala nr. 1, Oradea
- 2007-Jan-25 -
music therapy
http://www.impreuna.arts.ro/articole.php?limba=2§iune=2
I enjoy using music therapy with children with hesitating behaviour. It has happened to me to stand in front of the mirror and play the small drum. I was standing with my back to the child who was avoiding me and I was singing while observing him in the mirror. My position underlined `indifference`, nevertheless suggesting him cooperation only through music and through that interesting `never-explored` instrument.

`Last year, `Music as Therapy` initiated a contest, inviting all Romanian work partners, who develop music therapy programmes in different centres, to respond to the following question: `What does music therapy mean to me and my clients?` The received high-quality letters were studied by the members of `Music as Therapy` from the advisory group of Music Therapists. The hard decision was made and the following specialists were awarded with musical instruments: Seitamet Seian from the Neuropsychiatrical Recuperation and Rehabilitation Centre Techirghiol and Zina Costin from `For You` Day Centre won the 3rd and 2nd places, and the first place was won by Monica Szabo from the Special School no 1, Oradea.\\`

Alexia Quin, Director of `Music as Therapy`

On November 2004 `Music as Therapy` sponsored the participation of 20 persons at `Together through Art for Disabled Persons` Conference.

Composing a song, singing is a communication of personal inner vibrations, of the way in which events, memories, emotional states reverberate at the level of our body. The way in which a child plays the drum spontaneously provides us significant pieces of information regarding the relationship between the Ego’s states - speaking from the transactional perspective: how much freedom the `genuine child` has, how much the `critical parent` intervenes etc.

Therefore, we can observe in a few minutes of spontaneous singing at a percussion instrument the temper, the rhythm, the psychological strength, the repressed or exteriorized hostility, the self-control degree, the conformity degree, the capacity of movement coordination, the anxiety. All these features guide me in my work of empathic closeness to the child. My answer consists both of the client’s reverberations’ characteristics and their resonance produced in me. Hence I communicate to the child that he is understood, that I pay great attention to him, to his way of being and that I accept him as a person. In a secure environment I offer him freedom of expressing the new-born resonances in his inner being.

Music therapy has the advantage of giving the opportunity to simultaneous communication both with the conscious and the unconscious. The use of musical metaphors permits to experience and express vividly various emotional states. The musical metaphors can constitute the first step in identifying, understanding the states of emotional tension and their associations.

I enjoy using music therapy with children with hesitating behaviour. It has happened to me to stand in front of the mirror and play the small drum. I was standing with my back to the child who was avoiding me and I was singing while observing him in the mirror. My position underlined `indifference`, thus suggesting him cooperation only through music and through that interesting “never-unexplored” instrument.

This is how the first two sessions took place. At the third one the child came closer, first to the drum, then to my hair. At the beginning he was playing the drum in a shy and hesitating manner, each time drawing back from this action. Gradually this type of interaction became our first game, and today we use it as an introductory part of our meetings. These children usually prefer routine. For that reason using as musical anchor a song, they will be able to foresee the scenarios that follow and will be less anxious at the change of the game, of space positions, of instrument.

An essential step in therapy is the one when a child with whom I have worked individually starts to collaborate with another child. Even though at first the child won’t know how to interact to him, through different musical games he will learn communication rules, he will learn how to feel comfortable amongst the others.

To school, to me, to the children who attend to our school, music therapy becomes a new hope, a new method of human togetherness, but it could as well be a source of relaxation between colleagues.

Contact Special School from Oradea: t/f 0259 437 891

On Life After Death- E.Kubler Ross (Review)

My review for this book of the famous Elisabeth Kubler Ross about thanatology.
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4572

Review - On Life After Death
by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Celestial Arts, 2008
Review by Lucia Teszler
Nov 18th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 47)

It's hard to believe that humans appeared on earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, and since then have progressed in the knowledge of the world, has landed on the moon, haven discovered nuclear fusion and the secrets of genetics, but still have not been able to find out the meaning of life, of death, and especially of premature or sudden death. We tend to treat death and mourning as taboos. But Elisabeth Kubler Ross has changed the world, more exactly, has changed the way humans understand themselves from the perspective of death.

We can admire the courage with which this author dedicated her life to understanding this taboo subject: the psychology of the dying, thus, she reverses a prejudice largely spread in the consumer and 'be happy' world, that of denying the existence of death, of considering it a mistake made by others instead of confronting it and preferring to reduce it to silence instead of listening to the confessions of the dying. However, there is no better teacher than a dying person. (p. 21)

Elisabeth Kubler Ross became famous because of her book Death and Dying where, as a result of her clinical observations, establishes stages in the elaboration of our own death, stages which we can find in any trauma. There in a time of denying, when we continue to plan our lives as if we hadn't heard the diagnosis, or when, after the funeral of our beloved, we are waiting for them to come home, there is a time of rage, a time of negotiations, there is a time of sadness and resignation, and still, there is a time of acquiescence, especially if there is help in the elaboration of these stages.

We can sometimes talk about death without any fear even in front of children, for example when a mother knows that she is dying, she will tell her children, so that they can say goodbye, the mourners must be able to share their pain. Nothing is as painful as silent suffering and the lies with which one tries to hide a grievous event. That is what the fourth chapter of the book deals with.

The book is a collection of four essays on the theme of life after death. It stresses the conclusions the writer has reached in her career, sitting near the dying.

There is no death, says the author. Death is similar to the moment when a butterfly comes out of its cocoon, just like when the soul leaves the body that it gave birth to. Thus, death is the beginning of eternal life, a kind of birth to a higher self conscience.

The arguments she brings in favor of her plausible hypothesis about immortality are the results of the testimony of 20,000 people all over the world, of all cultures, religions and ages who have gone through clinical death.

According to the testimonies in the first moments of death there is an extra sensorial perception, that of leaving the body accompanied by an awareness of body completeness. For example blind people are able to see people around the operation room, and can give details regarding colors, deeds, but when they return to their bodies, they become blind again. So all our senses are entire, we are in a perfect shape.

It is important to know that nobody dies alone because in the moment of our death we are welcomed by those who have died previously, those who preceded us in death even if by little time. Interestingly, the dying often didn't even know about the death of that relative. How is that possible if not through the existence of our soul even after death?

All the patients speak of serenity, of equanimity, of being welcomed by more love on the other side. Then comes the experience of passing through a tunnel or over a bridge, the experience of a place dedicated to passage, accompanied by the recollection of everything we had done, said or thought during our life. And we see things both from our point of view and from those who are around us: how much joy and consolation and how much suffering we have caused. It is important that there is no other judge than ourselves, we are the ones who blame ourselves for not giving the joy when we had the chance to do it. At the other end of the passage a bright, dazzling light is waiting for us and it is perceived as the unconditioned love that created us and to which we return after learning the lesson of life. Those who were in clinical death did not go further this light, but they felt the unpleasant feeling of being put back to their bodies.

What can we learn from these testimonies for our life? The meaning of death as an experience is serenity, peace, trust in an experience of unconditioned love which is waiting for us as a fulfillment on the other side; and probably that's why many readers who were mourning expressed their relief and equanimity after reading it. Man has a choice to become a Nazi monster if he wants, or a comforting soul as Mother Theresa from Calcutta. The way we live our life, the degree in which we give unconditioned love and consolation will be remembered in the moment of our death, where we will be our own judges.

Another conclusion of the book is that we must not fear death because fear hinders us from loving unconditionally, from learning everything we need to understand this life. When death comes by itself it is a passage to a higher state of conscience where there is perception, smile, love, happiness. And our sufferings are meant to help us grow.

And, above all, the meaning these experiences have for life is that one should not be afraid to love, to love unconditionally, without expecting anything in return, one should try to bring as much love and consolation to those around one as possible. Do not postpone it, do not be afraid, love!

© 2008 Lucia Teszler

The erotic phenomenon

Ho finito e pubblicato la mia ricensione al libro di Jean Luc Marion- Le phenomène erotique
Mi è piaciuto molto la sua analisi del fenomeno dell'amore, ti fa riscoprire, da nome a sentimenti indicibili che vivono dentro di noi quando amiamo.
Amare adesso o mai! amare come se questa fosse l'ultima possibilità di amare!
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4225

Review - The Erotic Phenomenon
by Jean-Luc Marion
University Of Chicago Press, 2007
Review by Lucia Teszler
May 13th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 20)

Marion's book on the erotic phenomenon is an important moment in the development of his thinking about the re-foundation of philosophy, not based on Cartesian objective certainty, but on the act of free giving.

Starting from the sixteenth chapter, we can find a clear and rigorous phenomenology of love; Or can we read it from the beginning as an attempt to read the re-foundation of the metaphysics, starting from the erotic phenomenon intended as a gift.

The first 15 chapters, however, deal with the discussion by Marion of Descartes and the Cartesian tradition based on the cogito certainty. According to the author, the certainty of the objective world doesn't protect us against vanity.

Thus, although cartesian philosophy begins from the cogito, Marion refuses the foundational value of the objective thinking and chooses love, the erotic reduction, because the meaning of life come from elsewhere, from living for the Other.

The reassurance of the meaning of our existence always comes from the other, from elsewhere. We must recognize that we need to be loved by someone to get a sense of our existence. Indeed we feel fulfilled only when we give, when we love. The amorous phenomenon is the phenomenon of the other within me.

At the start of a relationship I have the expectation of somebody who, loving me, will give a reason to my existence, and, in the end, I am in the remembrance of the moments when I loved, when I decided to dedicate myself to a certain person for ever and ever. In fact, the moments of erotic reduction occur when I recognize the sense of my life in a particular Other, a happiness for which I want to live. These are the most important moments in my life when I am building my own individuality through another.

At the end of my life, I will be the sum of my free acts of loving, which, if sincerely devoted to an Other, knowing that now they are for ever, would change us and remain for us sources of self-strengthening in times of difficulties in life.

The originality of Marion consists in having made a more solid foundation for the process of individualization than the Cartesian philosophy of objective certainty, in saying that my identity is not in the cogito but in giving, in loving, thus putting precisely the foundations of a different philosophy.

Love must discover itself as a given and offered phenomenon (p.22) With all my lived erotic experiences, all my consciousness and with all my practice as a lover, only the other knows if I love him or not. I receive myself from the other, I am born from him (p 195) I became myself trough living for other by giving him proper significance.

The real adventure of love, and the analysis of the erotic phenomenon begins when the lover dares to break the circles of logical and economical expectation of reciprocity to be loved, the moment when he or she decides to love first, not taking care of the risk of exposing themselves, wishing only to make the other happy and to give them a meaning. Loving first is a risk that I assume, loving at a loss without the fear of loosing everything, exposing themselves first without any guarantee, like a lover, whose love is accomplished in loss, in giving without guarantee.

The argument against vanity is giving just out of love, giving first without asking for a response.

This way, I can love not only the being but also that what no longer exists and thus love is a victory over nothing, because not even death can stop it. Loving first, love in loss, without demanding reciprocity can not be stopped by anything. This hints to a God without being, because love is more than being and wins over nonexistence.

Love is not only a risk, love is transgression. There is no reason for love. It breaks out like a war breaks out in beyond any reason, or any logical, reasonable principle.

This lack of sufficient reason and risk to love without the guarantee of reciprocity gives the lover the freedom of his ipseity, the decision for their own sense, and the freedom to find or to create his own sense trough this unknown Other. Trusting blindly in the sense of Other the lover find the reassurance of their own sense. By loving one becomes the creator of his own as well as the other's meaning, becomes the creator of himself, causa sui.

I have access to my final individuality through this unreasonable love, through this risk of greatest exposure. Because I become myself in my unique individuality not when I think or when I hope but when I decide as a lover to love first. I decide to appear through her through this particular other even if I don't know anything about him.

The signification imposes itself as having come from the other. Through the amorous oath the lovers declare to each other even without saying it : Here I am, Your signification (p.104) The erotic phenomena is a reciprocal phenomenon because of this crossing signification that both lovers receive and offer to each other. The two egos are accomplished as lovers, crossed exchange of signification and the two oaths become one.

The lover is individualized by desire because what I lack lives in my inner life and defines me more intimately than everything that I possess. I become myself when I recognize the One that I desire "this is the One for me now and when I decide to desire him for ever. In this moment I am not longer the same and I could not become the same. The oath is for ever. Love marks us irreversibly if for a time we had hoped that we will love each other once and for all. Without this hope we can't speak about love, and even if love lasts for a short time this hope is justified.

The lovers give each other what they do not have, each flesh receiving itself from the other, they experience the same erotic accomplishment and each sees in the glorious face of the other that they live the same feelings. From the crossing of the flesh, wherein each flesh receives itself from the other the two gazes become at the same time immanent and transcendent to one another. In erotic reduction I do not enjoy my pleasure but hers/his (p.128). I can say that I also enjoy the power to give pleasure to my beloved, the power of my flesh on his flesh to make him lose his self-control, become his glorious flesh, to give him to himself entirely, I feel myself when I create him

However in the chapter on orgasm Marion doesn't pursue this ascending to experience the full unity and interpenetration of lover and beloved until losing finally one in the other through orgasm but prefers the interpretation of a fall in disillusionment, of a discontinuity of the erotic reduction. The experience of being safe by loving others vanishes and we return into the world "The other's flesh pass from its glory to a physical body, the divine form and essence of my decomposed loves end up as a carcass" (p.137)

Following that, Marion continues the phenomenology of love analyzing the faithfulness, the childish, obscene and mystical language in eroticism in the same rigorous and clear style rich in deep meanings, but the erotic dialogue is going to conclude. This signifies not success but running around. The failure here gives one a feeling of discontinuity, of suspension of love, thus the discourse continues with methods of keeping alive the oath of love, to ensure the loyalty of the other who is giving and is possessing my sense, beyond the suspicion of jealousy, beyond the fear of the betrayal.

The exit from the suspicion happens again as a dare, as a free gift, when the lover paradoxically decides to guarantee him that he/she believes in the eternal faithfulness of the beloved. The lover decides how sincere the other is and decides his faithfulness for her. I decide that instead of the statement "I love you" I declare "You truly love me, I know, I'm sure of it."

I declare to him "You truly love me" and I receive this declaration from him. I will receive myself from the other, just as I am born from them. (p.195)

The gift character of entire erotic phenomenon culminates in the impossibility of being stopped by death because the lover, from the beginning of his advance , anticipates eternity, he supposes eternity. The meaning of love is just this desire for eternity.

The lovers ensure the phenomenalization, the visibility of their oaths' endurance through a third party who will be the child whose arrival and growth will be a free exercise of giving and in the same time will make visible their shared purpose. But the child is in transition, there comes a time when the child departs.

Finally the loving of eternity, the search of phenomenalization in a third party, their love for searching confirmation can not be entirely satisfied by a child. The sense of impossibility to ensure the eternity in time for our oath is broken from a new gratuitous act that brings the experience of love to eschatological limits. I decide to accomplish the promise of eternity without waiting anymore, right now. Nunc est amandum (p.211), we must love now, now or never, now and forever, love without regrets and without remembering that the moment will pass One must love now as if this was their last chance to love. This is the inner eternity of love

This eschatological love drives us to God, leads to the lovers' passage to God. The conclusion is that "God surpasses us as the best lover 'conclusion that takes away the value of the risk of exposure, of giving meaning to frailty, of the glorified flesh and gaze, of the individuation through one certain Other. For those who know the other works of Marion and his conception of God and of the gift (God without being. Prolegomena to Charity) the theological conclusion of the book will be clear, that is, God is the greatest expression of the gift and the greatest lover.

To be honest the structure of this work does not make the necessity of this theological conclusion clear enough. Marion's conclusions in the end of the last subchapter appear somewhat artificial, and will be understood only by those who know his other books, his different image of God. This does not take away the merit of having indubitably given the erotic phenomenon a new enlightening philosophical meaning

You have to give yourself time to read this book slowly because there are many ideas that invite to investigation and put the meaning of love in a thoroughly new light and invite you to study more deeply the sense of the loving experience focusing on the creation of a meaning, on ipseity, and the foundation of ourselves, on a free gift, on God and on eternity.

© 2008 Lucia Teszler

Lucia Teszler is a PhD Student in Philosophical Hermeneutic at University of Turin

Psychotherapy and Spirituality

Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality(N.Field) reviewed by Lucia Teszler
http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=3584 Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality takes us on a journey in the world of contemporary psychoanalysis, in the area of its coping with the problem of spirituality. What is spirituality? What is the relation of spirituality with religion? How can we integrate it in therapeutic discourse and practice? What is religious fanaticism and fundamentalism and how could they explained trough psychoanalysis? The book consists of a series of ten lectures delivered in 2002 at the London Centre for Psychotherapy. The lectures are by 10 famous psychoanalysts or religious experts and are followed by responses by other specialists. The spiritual experience recovered by psychoanalysis is not the "oceanic feeling" that retrieves the "primary narcissism", in Freud's terms, but consists of the possibility of communicating from unconscious to unconscious, thus returning to the romantic idea of the universal sympathy. We exist through the spirit; we exist in the psyche, rather than the psyche existing separate in each of us (Chris MacKenna). Once the importance of the communicative space is emphasized, psychoanalysis distances itself from Jung's self-governing religiosity, already criticized by Martin Buber, and finds spirituality exactly in the relationship with the inalienable Thou. What then is the spirit for British contemporary psychoanalysis? The spirit is what keeps me alive, the capacity to have a hidden intimate space inside us where significant events are happening (Chris MacKenna); the spirit is what protects us from becoming a stone; it makes our heart sing; we feel alive because of it (K. Wright). One could find it when listening to the music, looking the stars or when we are seeing the smile of a new born baby and especially when falling in love (Field). Following Winnicott's theory, we understand spirituality, this force that keep us alive, thanks to the mother's tender sights, in her smiles, in her cares, who is the first singing master of the soul (Wright). Through her care, from this harmonious interpenetrating, our soul not only learns to sing but it learns the abnegation, the altruism, the self sacrifice, the ability to understand and to feel other's feelings without words. Hence, we learn the sympathy which, if we analyze profoundly, is in fact the final spiritual goal of Darwinian's evolution (D. Black). Furthermore the growth of these altruistic qualities, this preoccupation to understand others through sympathy, to love, is just what every great religion teaches (K. Armstrong). This philosophy could be synthesized by Rabin Heschel words, If we put ourselves at the opposite pole of Ego we are in the place where God is . The really encounter of the other, the feeling of other's being, the mutual relationship between two persons, creates a new dimension which allows those two members of communion to become an Us, a co-existence: different from the individual members of couple. That spiritual dimension is called by Field the fourth dimension. J. Klein draws a history of this concept, naming it this common space, the space where the two persons are recognizing themselves in the same us, an experience that is similar to Jungian conjuctio: where two persons are profoundly united, an intense mutuality of feeling (Silverstone). Discussing psychoanalysis and contemporary physics, R. Gordon claims that the spirit is the secret relation between things, between humans and nature, between observer and observed. And the spirit in its worm form penetrates every minor part of everyday life, even the profane one. (A. Samuels) The spiritual experience is not always a joyful experience, writes J. Klein and N. Field. It could be a very disturbing experience, a devastation that wakes us from the everyday life's dreaming and its innocent illusions, leading to respectful terror about ineffable experience (Field). That is the main reason why the meeting with the spirit could become a problem to be discussed in psychiatry. One of the most important contemporary issues discussed by the authors is religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. The spiritual, religious quest grows up partly from the desire to find sense in life and on other part from the desire for ecstasy, to break the one's individuality (Armstrong). Spirit by definition is an eternal transformation. In spite of this, we find in religion the desire for the concrete, the narcissist desire to have the certitude of being on the right way (R.Gordon). We should also mention that although spirituality is reevaluated, religion as an institution is not. Religion is seen as equivalent to dogma, to conformism, to certitude and narcissist pleasures. The dogmatic stance stems from the goal to maintain an identity when a person feels is in danger of disintegration. Fanaticism and fundamentalism are based on this fear, on the anger, on the feeling of being threatened permanently (Armstrong). Britton's lecture provides a profound psychoanalysis of fundamentalism as a worship of the word, where the word becomes a concrete object, an idol and at the same time the concrete object becomes a sign. This process is similar to certain psychoses. Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality helps us understand why the psychoanalysis played and continues to play a significant role in the evolution of human spirit. © 2007 Lucia Teszler