An Interview with Marianne Bargiel

By Guylaine Vaillancourt

Marianne Bargiel is practicing music therapy since 1991 with children and adults in school, community, and psychiatric facilities. She has taken on Josée Préfontaine’s work at directing the Institut québécois de musicothérapie. She is a candidate for a psychology Ph. D. (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) where her main research interest is musically evoked emotional processes in psychopathology.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: How did you come to music therapy?

Marianne Bargiel: I come from a family that has a little musical gene hanging around. I have a brother 5 years younger, who is autistic. He was challenging for the people working with him. However he had been able to learned to talk using rhythmic games, and he spontaneously played a familiar melody on the piano on the first time he saw one, at age 4. As neither the education system nor the rehabilitation one knew what to do besides proposing my parents to intern him, my mother was attending all types of conferences looking for resources. One day, as I was 15, she came back saying she attended a presentation on music therapy. “There it is! – I instantly stated. That’s what I want to do!” Music therapy, by its single name, represented for me the conjunction between my two central interests: the human being, and music. From then on, I became a member of CAMT long before studying in the field. Somehow, it is my brother who introduced me to my future profession.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: How did you get involved with CAMT?

Marianne Bargiel: During my undergraduate studies in music therapy, I used to do some translation for CAMT. Since 1995, I became involved in committee work for the Association québécoise de musicothérapie. Then, from 2006 to 2009, I was the French editor for the Canadian Journal of Music Therapy. At the same time, I joined the Internship Supervision Training Committee which was newly created.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: Who have been the important figures in the development of music therapy in Canada?

Marianne Bargiel: In my part of the country, Québec, Thérèse Pageau was a central figure who sowed important seeds for many of us. After her, Josée Préfontaine made a huge contribution, being a pioneer in clinical supervision. Thanks to her, the internship ceased to be what it was at the time: “a vague possibility one might consider eventually after the music therapy training”. Rather, she thought it was the most important part of the training, especially relating to professional identity. All along her way in her doctoral studies, she shared her discoveries with her peers, helping the community grow with her. Josée was also a fervent claimer for music therapy to exist in French in Canada, and that is thanks to her that CAMT has become a bilingual association.

Also, I think of Linda Labbé, who is our specialist in clinical assessment. She is a strong clinician who, over the past 20 years, has developed at Joseph-Charbonneau School in Montréal, a fantastic practicum/internship site with multi-handicapped teenagers. She has pushed back communication limits for these younsters, using adapted musical instruments, and fostering strong quality interactions with them.

Another prow figure of music therapy is Guylaine Vaillancourt. She has this talent to bring together different generations of music therapists, facilitating transmission of knowledge from experienced ones to the less experienced. She spreads her passion, prompting people to get professionally involved. She drives out specific talents, then trusting new ideas. She is an excellent “head hunter”, and she has brought a lot to music therapy by facilitating clinical events like conferences or continuing education activities.

Last but not least, Carolyn Kenny has been a strong inspiration source. When I first got to know her as she was teaching for a one-week course, I remember how she strengthened many of us about our professional choice, which at the time was most unknown and unrecognized. Many different clinicians and researchers have leaned over her thinking. Every time I get to bump into Carolyn Kenny, she renews this little fire she had fostered inside me 20 years ago. Despite her notoriety, she keeps being authentic with anyone, just putting so simply in human words everything she knows.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: How do you see the development of music therapy in Canada?

Marianne Bargiel: I see the development of music therapy as… developmental - in the very ontogenetic sense of the word. Music therapy is a profession that really grows and matures. One can notice a growing number of music therapists working, with more services provided, and more clinical experience collectively gained. In addition, research blossoms with graduate programs opening across Canada, and soon, I hope, with doctoral programs. Adding to a solid tradition in qualitative research, the growing interest of music therapists for quantitative methods of investigation brings us to the evidence-based research, a now very common language within the health field and governmental structures.

Moreover, with the training levels increasing, standards of practice in clinical and ethical questions are more defined. As the body of knowledge grows, it is translated in French by music therapists in Québec. This brings Canada to a unique role in the francophone countries.

In Québec, there are two things that need to be mentioned. First, music therapy is now part of the 20-year old Creative Arts Therapies Department at Concordia University in Montreal, with a brand new program. This is prompting the development of new clinical practicum sites, and these are benefiting from the academic support that might help systematizing their supervision experience. Hopefully the next generation of music therapists will be oriented earlier in college and university, so they will arrive to the graduate programs better prepared.

Secondly, while the discussions with the Office of Professions in Québec are starting to be more consistent, the education public instances are discovering that music therapy has been practiced in schools for almost 20 years. In a word, the face of music therapy is changing.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: What would be your definition of music therapy?

Marianne Bargiel: I adopted integrally Bruscia’s definition: "Music therapy is a systematic process of intervention wherein the therapist helps the client to promote health, using music experiences and the relationships that develop through them as dynamic forces of change" (Bruscia, 1998, p. 20). Bruscia himself considers it as a “working definition”; I personally consider that this definition “definitely works”!

I find this most brilliant to emphasize together the experiential and relational dimensions, which are so singular to music therapy, as being themselves simultaneously the engine of the therapeutic process. I see in that a deep conceptual nuance as opposed to many other definitions which state about “the use of music”. Many different professionals can “use music” in their work – occupational therapists, speech therapists, educators, and so on. But only music therapists are primarily concerned with the subjective experience of the client to the contact of music, whether its nature is an emotional, sensorymotor, cognitive, or objectal one. Because of that, Bruscia’s definition best conveys in my eye the essence of our work, while still being inclusive of a whole diversity of practices in music therapy.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: How would you describe your practice and approach? What is your personal philosophy in music therapy?

Marianne Bargiel: A large part of my practice is about clinical improvisation, where music is juxtaposed to words to arouse in the client the aimed experience. I use improvisation for psychotherapeutic or rehabilitative goals, based on an integrative approach: I give equal importance to the neuropsychological basis of music and human behaviour, and to the concept of developmental stages that are involved in the construction of motor, affective, and cognitive abilities.

I use concepts and techniques from the psychodynamic (eg. unconscious primacy, defense mechanisms, transferential dynamics), cognitive (eg. behavioural schemas, learning, brain plasticity), and systemic approaches (eg. individual’s role within his interpersonal network, isolation of single elements to act upon whole relational systems).

Guylaine Vaillancourt: What do you think your clients need to most?

Marianne Bargiel: The need that prevails for clients who consult regarding mental health or developmental issues is a need for regulation. When approached through emotional regulation, all the other systems (sensory, motor, attention, memory, language, etc.) get to work together in an adaptative direction (Thaut, 2002). Music is of course an excellent medium to stimulate emotional processes, and even more when the person does not have access to language as a tool for self-regulation. Clients seem to benefit from the fact that musical interactions activate both their body and their mind. This, I believe, helps them to reach a greater socio-emotional and functional maturity, no matter where they started from.

Guylaine Vaillancourt: Could you tell us about your interests in music therapy?

Marianne Bargiel: Of course, I am interested in the interface that exists between musical behaviour and emotional dynamics (normal and pathological), from both the psychotherapeutic and rehabilitation point of view. Group dynamics, in this context, also interest me a lot.

One last word

A new profession needs time to emerge; but as soon as a small nucleus of music therapists is formed in a community, this growth might become quickly exponential - is this about the cohesive function of music…? It might be. I think that an important part of the music therapists work is to give back to the human being a crucial aspect of his/her relationship to music that tends to get lost, maybe especially in the westernalized societies.

Guylaine : Dear Marianne, thank you for sharing and bringing inspiration to our practice, and thank you for contributing to the development of music therapy in Quebec and Canada!

References

Bruscia, K. E. (1998). Defining music therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona.

Thaut, M. H. (2002). Toward a cognition-affect model in neuropsychiatric music therapy. In R. F. Unkefer, & Thaut, M. H. (Eds), Music therapy in the treatment of adults with mental disorders: Theoretical bases and clinical interventions (pp. 86-103). St-Louis, MO: MMB.

Publications

Peers Review

Bargiel, M. (2002). Berceuses et chansonnettes : Considérations théoriques pour une intervention musicothérapeutique précoce de l’attachement par le chant parental auprès de nourrissons au développement à risque. Revue Canadienne de Musicothérapie, 9(1), 30-49. Aussi paru dans : Voices, http://www.voices.no/mainissues/mi40004000144.html

Bargiel, M. (2000). Prélude à la neuropsychologie de la musique et de l’émotion. Revue Canadienne de Musicothérapie, 7(1), 10-18.

Newsletters

Bargiel, M., & Labbé, L. (2010). La musicothérapie. Porte ouverte, Le bulletin d'information de l’Association des services en réhabilitation sociale du Québec, XXII(3), à paraître.

Bargiel, M. (2006). La supervision clinique en musicothérapie. L’Onde, Bulletin de l’Association québécoise de musicothérapie, 12(1), 9-10.

Bargiel, M., & Labbé, L. (2002). L’enfant dysphasique et la musicothérapie. Ses yeux parlent, Journal de l’Association québécoise pour les enfants dysphasiques, 15(2), 5-6.

Bargiel, M. (2000). Un modèle intégratif séquentiel en thérapie par l’art dramatique : applications en musicothérapie. L’Onde, Bulletin de l’Association québécoise de musicothérapie, 6(1), 8-11.

Doctorat Dissertation (in progress)

Bargiel, M. La perception émotionnelle musicale: Comparaison entre deux groupes cliniques (dépression unipolaire, schizophrénie) et un groupe non clinique.  Thèse dirigée par Suzanne Léveillée (UQTR) et Sylvie Hébert (Université de Montréal) dans le cadre du doctorat en psychologie à l'Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada.

Master Thesis (unpublished)

Bargiel, M. (2004). L’expression émotionnelle dans l’improvisation musicale : Élaboration d’une grille d’observation en musicothérapie. Université Concordia.