Memories from the 4th World Congress of Music Therapy, March 1983, Paris
The conference that was organized by Jacques Jost and sponsored by ARATP (Association de Recherche et d'Application des Techniques Psychomusicales), held in March 1983, attracted fewer participants than the July conference. In spite of a number of attempts, we have not been able to get in touch with Jacques Jost so must rely on information from people who attended. We therefore include memories from Tony Wigram and Benedikte Scheiby. Perhaps others who attended this congress will read this and want to contribute. These contributions will be welcome through Voices Discussions.
All of these contributors were asked the following question: Could you please share your memories of the March 1983 Paris congress. These memories can be professional, personal, or of any other type.
Here are their responses:
Tony Wigram
Tony Wigram, who attended the March 1983 congress as representative from the UK, wrote:
Here are some thoughts of what I can remember of Paris, March 1983. My memory may not be absolutely precise, but I hope it is useful.
At the 1983 Conference in March in Paris, there were only a few international music therapists, and most were from Europe. The conference was held in a hospital setting, and there were no consecutive sessions - only plenary sessions. I remember there being approximately 150-170 people there. At the end of this conference, Henri Germany (a colleague of Jacques Jost) presented a comprehensive proposal for a World Federation of Music Therapy. It was all in French, and we had a meeting to discuss this. There were a few people at the meeting, and it was not well represented internationally. So with the two significant problems of a lack of international representation, and the proposal only being in French, no decisions were made, and there was no further progress. It was agreed to postpone further discussion until the July conference organised by Edith Lecourt, where a core group (working party) that I proposed as the UK representative, was established. (More information on this development is included with the July conference information.)
Benedikte Scheiby
Benedikte Scheiby, who at the time lived in Denmark, wrote the following:
I held in Paris a half an hour lecture in French on the 29th of March 1983 9:30-10 with the topic (translated from French): Analytical Music Therapy and Regression. Theory, Techniques and audio taped examples from clinical work with adults and children in Psychiatry. I have the manuscript in French but I am just going to make it short here unless you want the whole thing.
The frame of reference was Mary Priestley’s theories and clinical work, Freud, Jung and M. Mahler. I played excerpts from audiotapes with music therapy sessions with autistic children and children with emotional problems and developmental delays.
I demonstrated how I through improvised music helped the child to go back in time (topical regression) to an earlier developmental stage and repair what needed to be repaired. Certain children were fixed in a certain developmental stage and I would facilitate through musical interventions that they would progress to the actual physical age that they had (5 years old, 8 years old, 9 years old).
I also demonstrated how I worked with dreams in music therapy with an 8 year old boy with anger management problems - working through the dreams in improvised music and also process the dreams and the music in drawings.
Another music example illustrated how through improvising musically together the actual nightly dreams that a 51 year old woman had, she could integrate split off parts of her psyche (repressed emotions manifested in a mean man following her and she hides behind a staircase). She played in music all the elements of the dream and I shared with the audience a certain part of the music and what the client said afterwards in relation to playing the dream. I also played an example of how a schizophrenic adult accessed the Samurai part in himself through playing percussion instruments and me supporting him on the big Chinese gong. I played parts of the verbal processing after the music for the audience. Last but not least I shared with the audience a piece of music where a music therapy student regressed to a 2 year old and working through problems of not being able to let go. I acted like a musical mother to her during the improvisation. So all in all a demonstration of AMT interventions in relation to regressional work.
Benedikte Scheiby lecturing at the Conference, Paris, March 1983
I got a lot of positive response from particularly the music therapists working in psychiatry and from some psychoanalysts that were working with music. In the break I was interviewed to a French magazine about my lecture. Mr. Jost invited Inge N. Pedersen and me to his clinic and Inge tried one of his treatments. As far as I remember he used recorded music to accompany massage.
All in all I felt much supported in my effort to practice Analytical Music Therapy at a time where this was not a particularly common approach among music therapists. After the conference I took training as a Bioenergetic body psychotherapist partly to understand at a deeper physical level what happens with the body when we work at a non-verbal level or with non-verbal clients. I am sure that the experience in France helped me to continue following the road of analytical music therapy work and I can add that since 1991 I have been in my own personal creative arts supervision with a psychoanalyst who is also a master in the creative arts therapies once a week – and still am – and still discovering new techniques, countertransference/transference dynamics in and outside the music and enjoying also processing in movement and drawings when the music is not enough.
I remember also eating very good French food and drinking great coffee and enjoying being a tourist. I also remember that a young woman trained by Mr. Jost also was very interested in the approach and we stayed in touch through letters for several months afterwards. I just do not remember her name.
Many greetings from Benedikte Scheiby.
Inge Nygaard Pedersen
You ask me about a conference in 1983 and at first I thought - Oh my god it is 26 years ago and I cannot really remember any details of that conference.
I remember it was the first music therapy conference Benedikte and I participated in. Benedikte gave a lecture and it was of course before the time of Powerpoint - it was overheads. The technique was very simple and not so well functioning, and I remember Benedikte using a lot of time to find helpers who could assist her on the technical side.
I also remember that several people told us that we had come on the wrong conference as this one was not at all psychodynamically oriented at that time. We did not know that another conference had taken place - as far as I remember the same year also in Paris - which was more psychotherapeutically oriented. I remember us (Benedikte and I) as rather naive - we did not know anyone - and we were absolutely sure that the programme we had started in Aalborg in 1982 was the best in the world and we realised that no other programmes presented at this conference had any integration of self experience and of a whole bunch of improvisational techniques as we had in Aalborg.
I also remember that we - together with some other guests visited Jost's clinic where he had a big black chair (that could be leaned back) and earphones and the idea was to 'dose' certain music for different emotions and sufferings. He also told about and demonstrated a certain massage form where people should receive massage naked. It looked rather intimate but he seemed to be ethically conscious about what he was doing. I was a bit doubtful about Jost - found him interesting at one side but also superficial at other sides. His ideas were far away from what we trained our students in Aalborg. Today I think he has been absolutely OK for his time and the situation in France - but it is really so far away in my memory.
I remember Tony Wigram and Leslie Bunt were there with whom we had quite some fun at a social level and I also remember that I was wondering why so many of the presentations were concerned about numbers (e.g., how many beats the child did on the drum etc). It was new for me.
I suppose these memories are rather fragmented and not of very much use but I cannot recall more detailed situations I am afraid.
All the best, Inge
Leslie Bunt
I recall the anticipation of travelling to Paris in March 1983 to attend the 4th Music Therapy World Congress to be held over four days at Pitié Salpêtière, one of the world’s most famous psychiatric hospitals. Here music therapists would be presenting their work in a setting where Charcot, the founder of modern neurology, had practised and whose lectures had been attended by the young student Freud. Later in the last century such famous names as Gilles de la Tourette, Janet and Lacan had also practised and taught at this hospital.
Unlike today at our world congresses with so many parallel sessions occurring, in Paris a large teaching auditorium was used for all of the main presentations. There were opportunities at the end of the days for the delegates to ask questions and to debate the main themes emerging from the day.
The majority of the participants were from Europe and this was the first time I noted on the list of presenters such well-known music therapy pioneers as Dr Ralph Spingte from Germany presenting about the physiological effects of sedative music and Dr Alfred Schmolz from Austria on creativity in music therapy.
Given the hospital setting of the conference it was understandable that there were French doctors and teams presenting on specific medical applications of music therapy, for example music therapy and obstetrics. There were also philosophically-orientated presentations, for example music therapy and phenomenology, and scientific presentations, for example relating to acoustics, cerebral dominance and music therapy (I remember such a presentation by Dr Heinrich Moll).
It was the first time that I heard Carla Savia presenting her projective personality test based on musical intervals and looking back on the programme I note that other Italian colleagues with whom I later worked were also on the list of presenters – Giulia Cremaschi Trovesi (Bergamo) and the Gianluigi di Franco (Naples). I also have memories of meeting for the first time Inge Nygaard Pedersen and Benedikte Scheiby, founders of the music therapy training at the University of Aalborg, Denmark.
From the UK Tony Wigram and his physiotherapist colleague Lynn Weekes spoke of their combined approach working with adults with profound disabilities and I presented some of the early findings of my doctoral research exploring the effects of music therapy with children with special needs. Memory may have got the better of me but I also recall that Elaine Streeter took part.
The conference was presided over by Jacques Jost and I recall some rather heated sessions facilitated by another member of the organising committee, Henri Germany, on the work and objectives of the World Federation. Finally as always at congresses there are some memories of special musical events, particularly, being in Paris, some good jazz.
