Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

I came to my interest in music therapy theory in 1981 out of a sense of disappointment. These days I spend a lot of time watching my little grand daughter strive to name things. As I observe her, I have an even deeper understanding of that drive in all of us "to name", "to represent", in some ways, "to fix" our understanding of things in the form of words. In fact, one can feel a little crazy at worst or inauthentic at best, when the naming of things does not match our experience of them.

After working in music therapy for about fifteen years, I hit a ceiling. No longer could I speak words to describe my work that did not match my experience. Priding myself on a Jesuit education that promised a secure foundation in understanding the nature of things and provided the disciplined logic to name in an accurate fashion, I felt that I had failed. The "field of play" began with sorrow.

When I had gone as low as I thought I could go, benchmarked by years of medical charting in language that did not match my experience with clients in hospital, I met Debbie, which took me even lower. This was a very depressing situation. Debbie was a patient who most medical staff relegated to yet another "lost cause". However, working with Debbie provided the motivation I needed to begin my journey into "a new language" (Kenny, 1989) to describe my experience in music therapy.

Many people believe that theory is composed of either standing on the shoulders of the grand historical narratives in the academy or the systematic critical analysis of these grand narratives a la Thomas Kuhn from an informed position. And of course, if theories are to endure, we must engage in this disciplined practice. Discernment is key. But theoretical ideas initially, can be born out of an intellectual wasteland or an emotional space. Their development is yet another question. Time is the judge of their enduring merit.

Many of my closest friends are psychologists who remain wedded to a psychoanalytic worldview. Our overlapping area of interest is music and the arts. Psychoanalysis is one of those theoretical traditions privileged to endure. Yet I cannot help but feel a recurring frustration and sorrow when I hear these colleagues and friends consistently relegate the arts to an inferior position in their theoretical minds while admitting openly the power and importance of arts expression in their own lives and in the lives of their clients. Sometimes their ideas seem sedimented, like a heavy weight that will not lift. So just when I feel that I have finished with the theoretical gesture, some new motivation comes along. Why?

Because I love the feeling of a beautiful idea. And because perhaps, I remain a bit like my little grand daughter. I maintain that drive to accurately name and describe.

In cultures that place words only on an equal basis with the arts, no higher, no lower, perhaps, the drive for theory is not so intense. Things are just known. Explanations are not always required for practices to be accepted. Understandings are transferred across the generations through action. Indeed, in some societies in which traditional healing practices are maintained, healing is contingent on not questioning the how's, why's, what's, when's, where's of the experience. In these societies, the value is on belief more than description or explanation. Does this mean that these societies are less civilized, less developed? Of course not. It means that they have different values. If we are good intellectuals, we do not judge. We explore. We learn from that which we do not understand, from the unfamiliar, the unknown.

I live on a bridge between these two worlds. When I participate in Indigenous cultural practices, I feel in my body, heart and soul, the importance of belief. And when I walk into the academy, predominantly a non-Native context, I feel compelled to name and explain.

The reconciliation, for me, has to do with the creation of beautiful ideas that can accommodate both worlds. Beautiful ideas can form that "liquid architecture", a term so often used to describe music itself, upon which we can build our discourse and improve our practice.

The "field of play" is a start for me. But it takes more than a whole life to develop a truly beautiful theoretical story and many voices must join one along the way, to critique, to analyze, to elaborate. Elaborating the core ideas in music therapy practice that are influenced but not determined by theories outside of music therapy is a start. Much of this work has begun in some parts of the world - each with a unique perspective.

Some say that there is an aspect of flight to theoretical work. But in its most clear and simple form, theory is a paper and pencil activity to describe a concrete experience and to learn from it.

Those of us who live and work in North America have the blessing and burden of a pragmatic philosophical tradition that sometimes feigns theory. We often rely on our European colleagues to get our noses off the ground and into the skies. But we can also rely on our colleagues in so-called developing countries who bring new, yet simultaneously very old ideas into the discourse on healing through the arts.

Beauty is an idea that many choose to avoid because it is so ambiguous, so complex. I live in Southern California. Here beauty is often culturally defined by something that is not beautiful to me. But our fundamental desire for beauty of our own making or our own viewing or hearing or sensing, is an idea worth considering.

As we develop our discourse in music therapy theory, an emerging field, it is my hope that we can remain broad and deep, that we constantly check our theoretical ideas with our experience; that we consistently remain open to consider, not to judge; and that we keep our yearning to appreciate, describe, explain, believe and continue to celebrate the humanness of yearning for a beautiful set of ideas.

Reference

Kenny, C.B. (1989) The Field of Play: A Guide for the Theory and Practice of Music Therapy. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co.

How to cite this page

Kenny, Carolyn (2001) Music Therapy Theory: Yearning for Beautiful Ideas. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2001-music-therapy-theory-yearning-beautiful-ideas