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
