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Wolfgang Schmid University of Bergen Karin Mössler, University of Bergen Jill Halstead University of Bergen Maren Metell PhD Candidate, Nordoff Robbins/Goldsmiths, University of London Katja Gottschweski Lunderød School and Resource Centre, Norway
attunement dynamics, ecology of spaces, equity, diversity
https://vimeo.com/840873513?share=copy
Background
Music therapy has a longstanding tradition in the field of autism, often presenting approaches that follow medical and functional accounts with a focus on the treatment of deficits in social interaction and communication. However, such accounts solely pinpoint difficulties on the autistic person, reinforcing neurotypical normalcy and exclusion. In this presentation, we challenge such unilateral, deficit-laden perspectives by looking at how attunement dynamics unfold and are co-created in music therapy intercation.
Material and Method
A video-vignette from music therapy with Aram, an autistic boy who explores the sound of Lego, and his music therapist Iris, formed the point of departure for our research. Iris described her efforts to attune with Aram as unsuccessful and failed. Based on the vignette, we conducted one focus group with parents of autistic children and one with an international group of colleagues, including a psychologist, a philosopher, a movement specialist, and an autistic music therapist, to further explore and understand processes of attunement. We conducted a hermeneutic embodied analysis of the data material.
Findings
Autisic and non-autistic actors equally contribute to the co-creation of attunement in music therapy. Iris and Arams intercation (relational space) is affected in enabling and disabling ways by both the physical space (the therapy room), the professional (the school context), and the sensory (material used) space. Aram´s Lego activity is his enacted expressive and relational repertoire that needs to be listened to carefully. It needs to be acknowledged as distinctive ingredient in the formation of relationship with his non-autistic music therapist.
Discussion
Drawing from our research, music therapy has the potential to foster an understanding of social interaction, that is mutually co-constituted and enactive, and that contradicts the mainstream pathologization of autistic social skills. Rather, attunement is shaped in relationality, formed by a dynamic network of persons, spaces, expectations and materials that hinder or facilitate attunement processes in music therapy.
References
Wolfgang Schmid is a musician and music therapist, Professor at The Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway.His research focus on participation in music therapy with autistic children and communities of care at the end of life.
Katja Gottschewski is an autistic music therapist living in Arendal, Norway, where she works with children and adolescents with various disabilities, many of them autistic, at Lunderød School and Resource Centre.
Jill Halstead is a musician and Professor at the Grieg Academy - Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway. Her publications focus on the gender politics of musical participation and corporeality.
Maren Metell is a music therapist currently working in a school. She is Assistant Editor of the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy. In her PhD, she explored together with neurodiverse families how, when and for whom musicking becomes accessible.
Karin Mössler is Associate Professor in music therapy. She works as a music therapist and researcher in Bergen, Norway.