Here we are. Hello everyone. I'm Paolo Caneva and you're listening to A Light-Hearted Journey Through Music Therapy — a podcast dedicated, of course, to music therapy. Today is Tuesday, May 5th, and in this eighteenth episode — as the title already suggests — I'll share out loud a few reflections on "doing" this job alone or in company.
It's quite common, when insiders talk among themselves, to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the individual music therapy session versus the group one. Whether out of necessity, by choice, by disposition, or through "life's coincidences", one ends up doing a bit of both, or specializing in one of the two. In my case, for example, I do music therapy exclusively with groups of people. Less frequent, but still present in colleagues' "talk", is the topic of the therapeutic pair versus the single professional. In the literature we have illustrious precedents that have attested to the validity of one "model" or the other. As for working with a colleague, we all know the example of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins — the first an American pianist and composer, the second an English educator — who gave life to the Creative Music Therapy method; the same can be said of Rolando Benenzon, who often considers the presence of a co-therapist in his sessions. But without going so far, here in our country we can draw inspiration from the "style" of Giulia Cremaschi Trovesi, which involves one practitioner playing and another on top of the grand piano lid, in an interaction that is both sonic and physical with the small patient. Still on the level of indications and possibilities described or recounted in the literature, there's no shortage of continual "reminders" of the interdisciplinary nature of our work, which very often sees us interacting with professionals from other disciplines, with a view to optimizing the therapeutic path. So far so clear — already seen and discussed.
But what I'm thinking about is something else. How is it that, in no definition of music therapy I know of (I don't know about you), when we define the acting subject — the "who" in "who does what" — I have never happened to read "music therapy is a process bla bla bla in which a practitioner or a group of practitioners suitably trained, etc… etc…"? And mind you: in the third edition of his book, Kenneth Bruscia collected as many as 102 definitions of music therapy.
Sure, I know what you're thinking… Paolo, wake up!!!!! do we really have to spell it out for you? Aren't 102 definitions enough? what world do you live in? it's an economic problem!!!!!!! we already struggle to get paid on our own… in twos it's painful… imagine in a group… in a squad… in a team… or how do you say it in music?… a band… an orchestra?… a choir?… well, well, how strange…
Just to be clear… in orchestral music therapy models this is almost taken for granted… but why only there? How is it that, for musicians who from the very start are trained in ensemble playing, in interplay, it has never crossed our minds to question individual work when we do music therapy? Why don't we feel the need to move as a "company"? Why must the community necessarily be only the recipient of our music therapy, and never the "acting subject"? Is it really just a question of money?
In these days many of us have experienced, besides the professional distancing from our usual work settings and from the people we work with, also a professional and human isolation… working alone may (perhaps) guarantee higher earnings, but at what price? How is it that in Italy (again, as far as I know) there are only two music therapy cooperatives? The world of the other helping professions "steals" terminology and metaphors from us to describe virtuous processes of collaboration (harmonization, attunement, timing, synchronicity), and we, who "inhabit" them, prefer to talk about setting, therapeutic office, studio, meeting, session… how much have we given up just to get a pat on the back from medicine, from psychotherapy, to enter — or hope to enter — the world of the "white coats", without realizing that they would pay who knows what to be able to "play" for a living?
I'll stop here. We'll hear each other again on Tuesday, May 12th, with an episode where I'll try to share some reflections on the theme "Music therapy and training: nature or nurture?"