László Harmat:
Hungarian Maltese Charity Service
Budapest 1126 Márvány st. 42. Tel: 355-0337
mentalhygienic expert
László Harmat
mobil: 20/324-2211
e-mail: lharmat@hotmail.com
International Pető Institute Budapest
Department of Pedagogy
Budapest 1125 Kútvölgyi st. 6. Tel: 224-1575
assistant professor ( teacher of music )
A CASE STUDY OF THE MUSIC THERAPEUTIC
RESULTS IN A SELF-ANALYSING CLASS
I conduct a class with clients having psychosocial and behavioral disorders. Its main
focus is to help people to bring up suppressed feelings with the help of music, relaxation,
and creative activities. 6-8 individuals work together in one group for three hours in every
second week. Music, related to a given theme (spring, fire, earth etc.) in each session,
supports the clients to express their thoughts and experiences. They also acquire simple
relaxation techniques that can help them in their lonely moments.
I demonstrate the progress of a young woman suffering from anxiety in discovering
and expressing her inner suppressed dynamism by her drawings made while listening to
music. We can follow the more and more confident delineation, the increasing usage of
colors and drawing space. Music was found to be not only a source of resumption for her,
but it also helped her to endure the every-day life burdens.
I am leading a self-analyzing class for the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service. In
the past years I have had some clients in the group, who have been addicted, or have
suffered from anxiety, some of them were under psychotherapy at the same time. This
group helps them to overcome and handle the problems of their actual life, and to
express their feelings about these through listening to music, relaxation, playing an
instrument, and other activities: through drawing, painting and prepairing small
objects. We usually work in small groups with 6-8 members and 2 group leaders.
Every sitting is organised around a certain topic (the spring, the way, the fire, the
ground, etc.) These topics are present in our work both through their profane and
through their symbolic meaning and they offer the clients an opportunity to talk about
their thoughts and personal experiences related to the topic. The piece of music, which
we are listening to, is also closely related to this topic. We ask the group members to give
a feedback about their impressions during listening to the piece. Active music making
means playing percussion instruments. Apart from the joy in making music together we
also encourage the clients to try to express their feelings and thoughts through the
instruments. The group members also learn some simple relaxation techniques, which
they can also practice when they are at home and if they are lonely. In the past years we
heve been working with ca. 50-60 clients. I know from experience, that for these clients
music is not only a possible way of recovery, but also an effective means to bear the
burdens of everyday life, and a source for a new beginning.
My client was a 24 years old young woman, who has been in the group for two
years, and was also under the therapy of Dr. Judit Jánosi. When she started the therapy,
she was in a fairly bad condition, she suffered from severe depression and anxiety. The
beginning of the therapy it came to light that Anna’s parents were divorced very early,
so she grew up without a father and the separation from her mother caused severe
problems for her. Compared to her age Anna seemed quite immature, she suppressed
the feminime features both in her dressing and in her behaviour. Her mother was a very
smart and lively person, and her utmost wish/desire has been for years, that her
daughter should obtain a university degree.
The problems with Anna started in secondary school, because her results were
quite week. What is more, she attended the same school, in which her mother was
teaching, so the mother could keep a firm hand on her, and despite the fact that she
failed several times, she could take the final exam. Anna has been sorely tried by these
years, because she realised, she could not fulfill her mothers expectations. She kept
herself aloof from the others, and lost her fiends step by step.
The mother did not realise anything from her daughters difficulties, she wanted to
see her own dreams fulfilled at any cost, so she enrolled the daughter to a college and
paid the tuition fees. She had very high expectations towards her daughter, both
regarding sports and school achievements. Anna could not live up to these expectations,
so she took refuge in the field of arts. Instead of attending lectures, she went to the
cinema. She grew fond of art movies, was often listening to music, and spent the tuition
fee, which she did not pay in the second semester, on books. She fled in her own world of
dreams, and the distance between her and her friends deepened, she got more and more
lonely. Her situation was complicated by the feeling of guilt towards the mother, whom
she swindled regularly. The complete downfall happened, when her lies were brought to
light. This was the time she applied to the Hungarian Maltese Social Charity Service for
a free psychotherapy.
At the beginning of the therapy she hardly spoke a word, she just sat still, and
stared into vacancy. If she said something, she never looked into the eyes of the
therapist. It was very hard to remove her from this inert stiffness. The reason for her
feeling of guilt was not revealed for months. In the hope of a faster and more effective
recovery the doctor sent her to our group in the firm belief that her sensitivity to music
would help her to get a step further. The doctor and me consulted once a month, and we
shared the experiences of the therapy and the group work.
I present Anna’s development in 5 steps. The first and most difficult phase lasted
until she admitted during the individual therapy that she lied to her mother. This was a
milestone towards the elimination of her feeling of guilt and meant also that she
liberated her suppressed passions towards her mother, first of all her anger. At the
beginning of the group work she remained in the background, she never opened up and
did not look into the eyes of the groupleaders, or at the other clients. She covered her
eyes with her long hair, and answered our questions only in one or two words. She could
not be attentive to the music we were listening to, she was too busy with her own
thoughts, as she told us.
Once we were talking about the connection between music and colours. We
listened to musical compositions of different atmosphere and I asked the participants to
associate the different pieces with colours. At the end everyone prepaired a rainbow of
colours according to the various music compositions. The difference in the atmosphere
was deliberately indicated by sharp contours - but this was not present in Anna’s
drawing. Her suppressed dynamism appeared not only on her drawings but also in her
sympathy towards the music she was listening to. She did not differentiate, said about
each piece, that it was beautiful and that she liked it. In the next few sessions I asked
Anna to try to consider her actual problems in isolation, and to focuse on the music. She
should let the experience brought about by the music come closer to herself. At first this
hardly ever happened, even if she was moved by the music sometimes, she could not
communicate this to the members of the group. During the relaxation she regularly
complained that she was not able to relax.
After four or five months the improvement in her condition was apperent. As I
mentioned before, this change was in close relationship with the results of the individual
psychotherapy that is to say with the decreasing intensity of she feeling guilty about her
mother. And that was the time our role really began in her life. In this second period we
concentrated on how Anna could express her emotions in a more differentiated way, and
how she could make aware and use of her hidden inner energies. One time we dealt with
the relationship of music and the emotions. We set the clients a task less familiar to
them. On a table we placed different percussion instruments of which they could choose
the one they liked and then they were asked to express their different emotions by them.
So as to make the task easier, first we sounded the feelings of fury, pain, love etc.
altogether but then the clients encouraged to express their own actual feelings alone by
means of the instruments. We made the task even more difficult by asking them to
identify the moods and emotions sounded by the others. It’s been a quite interesting
experience for me to see how sophisticatedly Anna could interpret the feelings of others
and at the same time how uncertain she was concerning her owns.
In this period her position in the group changed
as well. She became more open towards the others, her
manifestations became braver and sometimes she even
put her hair behind her ears so that her eyes could be
seen. The members of the group turned to be
encouraging, loving and open towards her, while they
used to feel sorry and aversion for her before. The
following drawing tells us a lot about Anna’s condition
that time. (1.picture) It represents a tree with its roots
holding on to the ground like a spider. A possible
interpretation of this is how Anna tries to hold on to
her family connections – while the ground is infinitely
dry. This drawing is very detailed and so are Anna’s
other works in general. The leaves of the tree are
drawn one by one in blue, the colour of water, instead
of green, the real colour of leaves. It possibly means
that those are not the roots that have some vitality in
them, but the leaves only. And indeed it was the time
Anna began to discover her inner strength and vitality.
1. picture
After three months the next step on Anna’s way to health was that she decided on going
to work in the evenings for a few hours. One of her close relations gave her the job, and
though she wasn’t payed for it, she spent less time at home, the contentment over a welldone job made her feel her own effectivness and her capacity to act. The third period
passed in terms of Anna manifesting the antagonisms in both life and herself. This
change helped her to further formulations of her own desires opposed to her mother’s.
Once we listened to Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau. Anna expressed
more times that the last two harsh and rude chords of this wonderful music made her
feel quite unpleasant, and that it would have been a lot more relaxing for her if it had
just faded away. This was a sign of the improvement of her attention and sensitivity. She
often made negative remarks on harsher and louder music. Once she said she couldn’t
cope with a dynamic movement of Bach’s Mass in b minor. At this point we must face
the problem of aggression. Indeed she could not cope with either the anger inside she felt
primarily towards her mother, or the aggression she had suffered. On the part of her
mother she suffered mainly verbal aggression, but, as she slightly mentioned once
during the individual therapy, she had vague recollections of occasional molestations on
the part of her father when she used to meet him as a child on paternal visitings.
Further on I encouraged her to make hold of those feelings and conflicts she felt
during listening to music and to express
them either in words or drawings. While
listening to Dvorák’s Romance I asked
the members of the group to take a trip
to the sky. Surprisingly Anna reached
great heights and depths in a few
minutes and she presented her trip with
fairly colourful pictures. Then we made
postcards. The clients were asked to
draw a picture on both of the outer sides
of a paper folded in two. One of the
pictures was to represent their own sky
as they saw it for the first time and the
other represented the one they would
have liked to see in the future. The
difference between Anna’s drawings can
be easily seen. The sky of her past is
dark, stormy and quite dynamic with
sharp, closed outlines. The future has
soft colours and the outlines can be
hardly seen. In the centre of the picture
an eye that sends out yellowish beams of
light seems to be delineated. (2. picture)
And this is the drawing that leads us to
the
problem
concerning
Anna’s
femininity.
2. picture
This is the next important phase in Anna’s life. From a more theoretical point of
view it may be supposed that Anna’s very attractive and womanly mother can be the
origin of Anna’s undeveloped behavior as a woman. This – and also the backwardness of
becoming financially independent – may be a rebel against her mother. Fortunately
later she reached that stage of her development when she wanted to find a new place of
work by her own. She got job in a fast-food restaurant, and from this time she has been
earning the money for her own coats. Her relationships become more colorful and richer
in emotions. She often goes to movie – and never alone. In this phase she likes talking
about men, love and dance in the therapy. Usually she arrives to the therapy session in
good mood, where she feels really fine. She is able to draft in details her emotions and
experiences emerged during listening to music, and she is also able to talk about her
actual problems. In this phase her most interesting drawing was inspired by a
symphonic poem, the Les Preludes composed by Franz Liszt. (3. Picture) The much
differentiated usage of colors describes accurately the changes in the atmosphere over
the music.
3. picture
Her progression, however, was not without hard periods. Her actual tasks often
made her anxious. It was especially difficult for her to say no to her mother. Once we
were listening to the Pictures at an Exhibition composed by Mussorgsky. One of its
themes, The Great Gate of Kiev, caused her really depressive feelings by its
monumentality. In her associations an enormous wooden gate appeared that she was not
able to open. Our next topic was the human relationship for which we chose the bridge
as a symbol. First we were discussing the role of music as a bridge between people, and
then I asked them to draw a bridge on which they are keen on walking. The drawing of
Anna was symmetrical and harmonic. (4.picture)The bridge runs between two trees
with branches bending towards each other. On the bridge a nicely decorated, small
building stands. The leaves of the tree are drawn the same way as one year earlier;
however the roots of the tree can not be seen, since they are covered by a road. However,
we do not know what crosses the bridge. The picture was drawn by black pencil and it is
rather lifeless.
4. picture
13. Finally we reached the present phase of Anna’s development. She goes to a
spanish language school and to a dance school. She became more relaxed and honest.
Sometimes she is anxious to open up and talk about her problems and unfortunately she
has not allowed us to ask her mother to take part in the therapy yet. Nowadays our most
important task is to make her growing self-confidence stronger and stronger. The last
drawing is from her last therapy session. It was also made with black pencil. The theme
of that session was the winter, and she drew a landscape inspired by the music of
Leopold Mozart and Vivaldi. On the drawing the winter was signed by the black color
and the bare trees, on the other hand the sunshine, small flowers and birds on the tree
also could be found. (5.picture) We hope that the trees will turn into green and flowers
will become even more colorful an Anna’s further life.
5.picture