Music and emotions

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From the course by The University of Melbourne

How Music Can Change Your Life

86 ratings

The University of Melbourne

How Music Can Change Your Life

86 ratings

Did you ever wonder how music works? This course provides free video, audio and journal resources that explain six basic principles about how music can influence individual and community health and wellbeing. From biology and neuroscience, to psychotherapy and politics, the ways we engage with music can make all the difference. Music has always played an integral role in the lives of individuals and communities all around the globe. This course explores the ways that music can be used to achieve positive changes with a particular emphasis on the most vulnerable persons. Six different understandings will be explored, each with their own set of values and assumptions. The greatest thinkers in each approach believe that their way of explaining the power of music is right, but we will show that understanding music in its entirety delivers the best results in each unique circumstance. Once we understand the various ways that music can change the world, we can make informed decisions about how best to employ its extraordinary power. Learners who engage in this MOOC can expect to both deepen and broaden their understanding of how music can be used with individuals, groups and communities. Specifically: • To distinguish between how music works on the body, in the brain, through the unconscious, for bonding, as political action and in reflecting culture, • To design practical programs that utilise music to support individuals, groups and communities based on examples shared in the ‘on-site’ case studies. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/jnde3w3

From the lesson

How can music reflect the psyche to improve mental health?

Music can be a powerful way to explore and comprehend our deepest emotions. When used in psychoanalysis, this can lead to rich experiences that may even reveal aspects of our unconscious world that can be processed within the safety of the therapeutic relationship. Within the field of music therapy, practitioners often debate the relative merits of free improvisation on instruments in comparison to using the preferred songs of clients in therapy. Both afford opportunities to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our relationships to others, and music more generally can be used as a health resource that travels with us as we recover from being acutely unwell and continue the journey of life.

Unit 3 introduction - part 1 of 28:58

Unit 3 introduction - part 2 of 25:03

Psychodynamic therapy perspective - introduction1:39

Psychodynamic therapy perspective9:01

Introducing Benedikte Scheiby1:59

The work of Mary Priestley6:02

Individual music therapy11:27

Music and emotions7:51

Research and theoretical foundations14:33

Meet the Instructors

Katrina Skewes McFerran
Professor
Melbourne Conservatorium of Music

Can you tell us why it is valuable to project your inner

material on to this wide array of instruments?

And what is actually the value, how does that help us to improve our mental health?

>> Let's say that you have difficulties

Let's say you had some kind of past trauma that creates

some anxiety every time you are in a certain situation, or panic attack.

And you don't really know why they're coming,

but you get very, very anxious, and you start breathing fast, etc.

So sometimes an instrument can help you

to identify if you play this instrument and

listen to the music that is sounding as if you had a panic attack.

Sometimes you can identify what emotions this panic attack has on the line.

Could it be be anxiety, could it even be anger?

Or what is this emotional underlying

content that is being symbolically represented by the instrument?

And it's a different way of learning to

listen to yourself and your inner sounds.

The instrument clarifies emotional expression,

and clarifies what kind of underlying emotions

different conflicts are representing.

Or maybe you have trouble setting boundaries and, or saying no.

So, maybe a drum can help you [SOUND] to be

okay about making a loud sound, and say, no.

Or you can sing or say at the same time as you're playing the instrument,

I [SOUND] don't [SOUND] want to [SOUND] do [SOUND] that [SOUND].

And it could be maybe difficult to say it without the instrument but

now the instrument is a reinforcer of the sound and

a reinforcer of the powerfulness of the emotion.

So that maybe next time when you're put in a situation where you feel you

have to say, no but I can't, then you practiced with a music therapist and

now it's for that reason easier to say no.

>> Yeah.

And it sounds to me- >> Wait.

It could also be the opposite way, that some people, they have trouble taking in

or listening peacefully and quiet to somebody saying something to them.

So if you work with a person on playing

an instrument very slowly and listen and

be patient to what that instrument is saying.

Maybe it might be easier to be patient in the new situation and

slowing down the tempo and taking in.

So it helps you to take in, because it opens up

your listening ability not only to listening to yourself.

But its practicing basically listening skills to external sounds too.

So because the instruments

are connected to listening,

at the same time as senses, touch.

It helps you to connect topics, themes, issues.

To what we need to figure out or connect or touch that we're afraid of.

>> Well, let me just clarify one thing, then.

>> Yeah. >> So that's a gorgeous explanation

of the instruments and the role of the instruments.

And although you're not saying so, because we have to focus,

what you're talking about some Freudian concepts about projection.

But tell me, it sounds as though it's very important to have the therapist as a part

of that form of expression, particularly if there is trauma in the past.

That it's not just about being able to express

using the instruments with their varied timbres.

But how critical it is for

that to be contained within the safety of the therapist-client relationship,

when there are serious issues from the past that are being dealt with.

Is that right?

>> Yeah. Let me say I look at the role of the music

therapist as something that Mary Priestly,

another music therapist, has talked about as a resonator tool,

meaning the music therapist is an instrument that the client can play on.

Again, meaning, I take in the music,

the way the person is speaking, the way the person is feeling.

I absorb it in my body, and I empathise with it.

And I can either just be there to listen and

be with it or I can actually express it.

What it is that I'm feeling that the client might not actually be aware of.

They might not be aware that they're tremendously angry.

And so I can choose, as an intervention,

to play back their unconscious.

It's coming to me in a form that we call counter-transference,

which is the unconscious emotion.

It is being brought up in me and

it's related to the client's transference, their unconscious emotions.

And so I can actually choose either to contain and hold their emotions.

Or can choose to introduce it in sound where it might be less challenging or

less difficult to receive when it's somebody else who shows the anger or

it can be easier for the person to hear and see it.

The other thing that is the importance of having another

person there that's trained in therapeutic presence, is the witnessing.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Even if you don't do anything.

If you just come in the room,

your presence will be felt.

And if you're an open person, as a music therapist,

it will help the client to open up and feel that they can trust,

that this is the place where I can deposit some things

in a safe environment, And I can leave stuff here.

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