As reaction to the my last column in Voices Barbara Wheeler ask me about my experiences, that I got in the East-European context, coming from a country, which was situated in East-Europe and in which now exist the values and norms of West-Europe. So I want to start today three "short-stories" about these experiences, which I had in situations, where East and West went into contact with each other in the last ten years.
I want to start my first ideas about this today as a short overview and want to continue a more intensive and detailed thinking about each of these situations in my next columns here in Voices. So let me go back in history just now. (This intercultural view may be also connected with the latest research-activities of Brynjulf Stige - we will see.)
In that year I went as a member of the german speaking "Conference of heads of music therapy trainings" to Zurich. There met members of six private music therapy institutes of Germany and Switzerland. They wanted to come together in main questions of music therapy to become a more powerful force in the public discussions of their countries and to get more official acknowledgement in their state health and education systems. The question was, how to start this project. A lot of topics were possible. In the topics, which were suggested in Zurich as first steps, you could see interesting differences. On the one side most of the five "western" institutes wanted to start a discussion about the state levels of incomes for music therapists and they want to start an integrative program for music therapy trainings for all institutes. Especially the "eastern" institute suggested as first step, before such very detailed visions are possible, to start a discussion on a meta-theoretical level. Our and so my point of view was, that there is no really theoretical discussion about the different music therapy approaches in the german speaking area of music therapy. There exists, may be, a Babylonia Tower Building in the speaking about music therapy. But there exist also different methods in music therapy, which are educated in the different institutes. The idea of a practical-theoretical-comparison of different items of music therapy, of items, which knows all this different approaches of music therapy, for instance "improvisation" and the different meanings of it, should be a basis. This conference continued the work, to find differences and common factors, what I suggested there, of some items of music therapy. The conference published its first results of that last year. It was very interesting, especially in Zurich, that the abstraction of finding common factors of this items in a dialectical way was a problem in this conference. This approach may be is more a positivistic one, which had a longer history in East Germany, if you compare that with the more constructivists thinking in West Germany in that time. But the part of meta-theoretical-common-factors is also a very necessary because of the actual political situation for music therapy, which needs more the common factors then the multiple variances. The meeting of east and west germane traditions of different ways in music therapy theory could give very important impulses for both sides. More detailed about this I'll write in one of the next columns.
Four years later the 8th World Congress took place in Washington/DC. Like every world congress also this congress took together the hundreds or thousands of ways of music therapy, which are developed and worked with all over the world. This congress was very important for me because of a lot of experiences. One of these experiences was, to learn some case studies of GIM and to speak about that with the therapists, which presented the case studies. The reason of my special interest was, that also in East Germany up from the 60-ies a special method of receptive music therapy was developed - the Regulative Music Therapy (RMT). - by Schwabe and other colleagues like Helmut Röhrborn have up till today further developed this method. - It was an adventure for me, that I saw similarities between the GIM and the RMT. To cut a long story very short, I could say after this time, to reach the acceptance of non-accepted feelings, seems to be the common aim of both methods. But the way, to reach such effect, is quite different. The drama of symbols is the basis of GIM and also the every time guidance of the traveling client by the therapist. Despite of that the very clear description after the listening of music of the perceptions, every client had during the listening of music, is the basis of RMT. In that context symbols and inner pictures are not so important. Detailed body-perceptions, emotions, music-perceptions and words of thinking are more important in the therapeutic process of RMT. - But also here, may be, I made an intercultural experience. In western culture pictures, visual symbols and in general the visual imagination is a very strength power in the everyday life. In many cases this power is to detect. That means, that you don't have the direct meaning in the pictures and symbols. You have to detect the meaning - for instance in advertisement. (E.g.: The direct meaning of a coffee-advertisement is not the sweet home you see, the direct meaning is, to buy this coffee. - And also in politics. The aim is there often, to work for a good "picture" in public life. But which direct sense you find behind this pictures? For which activities and which social groups is the result of such a picture very successful?) So may be, that GIM also detect the direct meaning of symbols and pictures in the medium of symbols and pictures on the personal level. - Despite of that in former East Germany pictures and films had not that importance, they have now. The word and its sense were very important. Also in films you had very long monologs and dialogs. On the level of words you had to be very carefully. The thinking could be, for which person, for which context are which words. In which contexts could be these words/senses/meanings very dangerous for me. So the direct and very long descriptions in RMT could be the direct way of every individual person, to reach their real individual emotions on the level of words and it is not necessary to go on the extra-way of symbols. - Today there is another social context for RMT. (But also in the case of RMT exist more intercultural connections. One example for that is the work with RMT in Japan. There the theoretical approaches compare the process of RMT with the process of Zen.) But in the end, the both ways of GIM and RMT could be very useful for different groups of clients, for which are, because of their individual differences, more successful the one or the other way to reach the acceptance of non accepted emotions.
The individual differences play an important role in the last situation of intercultural experiences I want to describe. Four weeks ago I returned from Ukraine. I could work there for a second time with a group of Ukraine students in the context of seminars about Active group music therapy (AGMT). The cultural experiences I made there, were very complex for me. On the one hand the Ukraine students reflected very quickly emotions in their individual play, in their improvisations. - By the way: Also in their psychology-theories emotions play a very strong and very important role. Emotions have an own value as one part of psyche. - The so quick consciousness and expression of emotions I didn't know before from other middle European contexts. On the other hand the description of musical behavior was completely done in the following way: "WE did that and those..." WE started, then WE had done that..." etc. The Ukraine lecturers smiled about that, and said: "That's Collectivism." which they did know from Soviet Union. The separate consciousness of acting as an individual person was to develop and was possible in the group-process of the students. In the end, a few of Ukraine students gave a feedback, that they had a special feeling of freedom in their improvisations in AGMT, if they compare it with other approaches of psychotherapy, they know. But there seems to exist a much broader meaning of that. Some musicians did show me their music therapy seminars, where they worked with a very general fixed semantic of music figures and dance figures. So they wanted to discuss with me the general meaning of a "crescendo". There seems to exist general aesthetic figures but no really individual ones, again of the level of behavior in that one example. So the tension between individual feelings on the one side and a consciousness of "collective" behavior on the other side, between freedom in own improvisational acting on the one side and social given general meanings of music on the other side are the tensions, which were for me a very complex, which I want to follow further here next time. - The new point of view was for me: I came now from West-Europe with our meanings of individual values, necessities and possibilities. But there seems to be one kernel of individual person, I did know even from my east-germane times, but which were developed in a new context. Is that a development or is it just another social context for thinking, social acting and scientific life?
Especially in these times of war between different cultures it seems to be very important, to know the other cultures, to try to understand them and to speak with each other and of course, to accept the individual factor despite of generalizations! - But of course nevertheless exist differences between different cultures. For music therapy theory from my experiences it can offer new ways, for music therapy practice it can bring a broader repertoire of music therapy methods and techniques, which is needed in practice, and in music therapy meta theories we can investigate the question, are there general human items in every kind of music therapy or have we to respect every cultural context? - I want to follow these questions and may be, in Voices - our world forum of music therapy - start about these a worldwide discussion in our discussion section.
Wosch, Thomas (2001). Intercultural Experiences with Music Therapy I. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2001-intercultural-experiences-music-therapy-i
Moderated discussion
These discussions are no longer supported. If you have comments to articles in the Voices journal, please register yourself at < href="http://www.voices.no">www.voices.no Then you can leave comments on all the published articles
You are alos welcome to leave us a message on our Voices Facebook page