A semi-standardized music therapy intervention for girls with Rett syndrome: A descriptive essay

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder resulting in a wide range of functional impairments and therefore greatly impacts the lives of both patients and their families. While genetic and medical aspects have been studied for several decades, rehabilitation intervention research is still in its infancy. In this study, the investigating researchers have presented a rehabilitative framework by using music therapy for girls with RTT. This model is founded upon the use of music therapy in light of Stern’s proposal of subjective experience and affect attunement; it also refers to Rosenbaum’s family-centered rehabilitation medicine perspective. This study both describes the theory behind this intervention and presents a newly developed outcome measure. This novel tool may have future clinical and research applications. Music therapy for patients with RTT has not been well researched yet, and as a result, is not universally recommended. However this study’s findings suggest that music therapy is an important component of multidisciplinary therapy. Further collaborative research should be encouraged in order to study and implement the use of music therapy in the treatment of severe disabilities. Projects such as the Enablin+program with the support from the European Commission constitute fundamental tools in promoting integrative medical research and international networks.

Remote or close? Notes on working psychoanalytically by videoconference

In a time of forced physical distancing due to the Covid-19 virus, psychotherapy has moved online, disrupting what some feel is essential to the process. For the individual therapy couple the author describes in this article, the teletherapy platform provided a frame in which deeper, earlier feelings came to light, not only in the new, initially unwanted therapy space, but between the patient and his wife outside it. One session, especially, made it apparent that one person's need for affect-attunement conflicted with the other's need for recognition of difference or separateness — arousing feelings of mutual betrayal of basic trust and rage between husband and wife. These were witnessed by the therapist who was able to work with what was taking place as an enactment of old trauma, unconsciously contributed to, but eventually reparative for both parties. Several sessions are presented before and after that pivotal one in which technical problems were collaboratively overcome by the therapeutic couple, providing useful metaphors for familiar, but previously insurmountable obstacles between the marital couple, as well as freeing up verbal and non-verbal affective expression and reflection in the virtual, but increasingly intimate consulting room.

Affects, Attunements and the Intersubjective Self: Perspectives from Early Development

This paper conceptualizes the self and related concepts so as to emphasize interrelatedness rather than autonomy. From this view of a subject embedded in relationships as a point of departure, it then critiques and restates certain analyticallyoriented concepts so as to render them in a more fully intersubjective frame: “affect attunement” (Stern, 1985), “mirroring” (Kohut, 1977), empathy, and projective identification. This approach draws on drawing on the infant observation research that has emerged in recent decades.

Bodies of Knowledge, Kinetic Melodies, Rhythms of Relating and Affect Attunement in Vital Spaces for Multi-Species Well-Being: Finding Common Ground in Intimate Human-Canine and Human-Equine Encounters

In this paper, we bring together two separate studies and offer a double similitude as it were, in finding “common ground” and “common worlds” between dog–human and horse–human interactions. Appreciation of the process and mechanism of affect (and affect theory) can enable a greater understanding of child–animal interactions in how they benefit and co-constitute one another in enhancing well-being and flourishing. Studies have thus far fallen short of tapping into this significant aspect of human–animal relationships and the features of human flourishing. There has been a tendency to focus more on related biological and cognitive enhancement (lowering of blood pressure, increase in the “feel good” hormone oxytocin) such as a dog’s mere “presence” in the classroom improving tests of executive function and performance. Study A details an affective methodology to explore the finer nuances of child–dog encounters. By undertaking a sensory and walking ethnography in a North East England Primary School with Year 6 (aged 10 and 11 years) and Year 4 (aged 7 and 8 years) children (60 in total), participant observation enabled rich data to emerge. Study B involves two separate groups of young people aged between 16 and 19 years who were excluded from mainstream education and identified as “vulnerable” due to perceived behavioural, social or emotional difficulties. It used mixed methods to gather and examine data from focus groups, interviews and statistics using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Photo elicitation was an additional source of information. This equine intervention facilitated vital spaces for social and emotional well-being. The important significance of touch to children’s and young people’s well-being suggests a need for “spaces” in classrooms, and wider society, which open up this possibility further and challenge a “hands-off” pedagogy and professional practice.

On improvisation as dreaming and the therapist’s authentic use of self in music therapy

This article discusses the Music Therapist’s authentic use of self in improvisation-based music therapy to involve the therapist’s ability to ‘dream in music’. The topic is explored with reference to the work of psychoanalyst Thomas Ogden and illustrated with clinical examples from work with an adolescent with autism. The author describes the music-based dreaming through which it was possible to establish a musical connection with the client for the first time that enabled the client’s music and process to evolve as it had not previously. The thinking presented has links with Winnicott’s ideas about play, creativity and psychotherapy; with Stern’s ideas about implicit relational knowing, intersubjectivity and affect attunement; and with theorising about transference and counter-transference in music therapy. The article develops a theory of dreaming in music that highlights the importance of the therapist’s ability to work with the creativity of the unconscious, trusting the music that emerges from within.

Bodies of knowledge, Kinetic Melodies, Rhythms of Relating and Affect Attunement in Vital Spaces for Multi-Species Well-Being: Finding Common Ground in Intimate Human-Canine and Human-Equine Encounters

Children’s beneficial relationships with animals are well known. Companion animals, particularly dogs have become an integral part of family life and children’s material culture. Aside the proven physiological benefits there is little research about what children say about their relationships with animals and how they describe them. In this paper we bring together both horse-human and dog-human interactions, finding common ground for understanding the complexity of human development, well-being and flourishing. Dogs in schools are fast becoming a trend in helping support and enhance children’s learning as well as their social and emotional well-being. Studies have shown that the very presence of a dog can increase children’s concentration, executive function and behavior. Also, equine therapy is gaining momentum and empirical studies are showing noteworthy benefits to children and young people. However, the lack of children’s voices means that the mechanisms for these benefits are somewhat unknown and unclear. In seeking to explore this, the authors utilize a visual, sensory and diffractive ethnographic approach to illuminate and illustrate, experiment and re-enact, how the children relate, share spaces and multiple subjectivities with their classroom canine, “Ted” and companion horse “Henry”. ”Henry” is part of a programme in which youngsters care for and engage in activities with horses.

Fantasy Control

Ulrik Volgsten focuses on the control of sonic imagination in general and takes as his point of departure a discussion on how imagination is reflected in a number of theoretical perspectives. The author proceeds to supplement these perspectives with the dimension of social interaction and its role in paving the way for “an emerging sense of music” uncovering two different modes of connection: metaphorical projection and affect attunement. Additionally, Volgsten discusses how the three thematically distinct aspects of imagination (musical archives, places and contexts, and identifications) are distributed and concludes with a brief case study on a Kurdish cultural association, exemplifying different ways in which imagination can be controlled, for better or for worse.