Book Reviews
Creative Supervision: The Use of Expressive Arts Methods in Supervision and Self-Supervision
By Mooli Lahad
(Jessica Kingsley Publications, Philadelphia, Pa., 2000)
Reviewed by Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D., REAT
Poiesis. Vol.
4, 2002
Tending the Garden: Mentoring the Future
Tending the garden of Expressive Arts Therapy with supervision has become one of the most important training issues in the healing arts field today. While there are many books about clinical supervision, only two focus on the use of arts in supervision: Supervision and Drama Therapy edited by Elektra Tselikas-Portmann and Creative Supervision by Mooli Lahad. Both books are very useful. The latter book, Creative Supervision is the only one whose approach is truly from an expressive multi arts perspective. As an expressive arts therapist, educator and supervisor, I appreciate both books in helping define the arena of supervision, differentiating it from therapy, training and education and accentuating the skills that do not overlap with the other endeavors. But as a strong advocate of value of multi-arts approach to supervision, I was thankful for Mooli Lahad beginning the exploration of the use of various different types of arts in supervision.
Lahad expands the definition of supervision by emphasizing the importance of using the arts, multi-arts images and the creative process in the supervisory relationship. He defines Creative Supervision as “using the right hemisphere and the analogical dreamlike mechanisms in the service of understanding the process of therapy, intervention and support. (P.13)” Lahad attempts to bridge the imaginal and linear worlds by exploring how each art form can expand supervision. He suggests that supervision is deepened by the marriage of the imaginal, clinical and cognitive, emphasizing the power of images to help truly understand what is happening in the therapeutic process. As I always use the arts in my supervisory relationship, I can attest to their value in enhancing the depth of understanding of the client, his/her creative process and images, the co-transference and the parallel process between the supervisory relationship and the therapeutic one.
In each chapter, Lahad investigates a different modality and how one might use it in supervision. The processes explored are visual arts, letter writing, use of sandplay objects, role-playing, guided fantasy and story telling. With the description of each process, Mooli provides an actual supervision session in which he used this process. Chapter Two is a great example. In “What is so fishy with Judy?” (p.25), Lahad takes us into a supervisory session with Gabriela an experienced social worker who is upset about her work with a teenager named Judy. Suggesting they use the “Color, Shapes, and Lines Exercise” (a very structured visual arts process), they explore the family dynamics and what was fishy about Judy and her mother became clearer. In this process, one picks a color for each person in the family system, including yourself as the therapist. Using these colors, the supervisee paints them in any shape. In a very collaborative way, both the supervisor and supervisee explored their associations to each color/person. In the associations, Gabriele began to see a fish like quality to Judy and began to see what was fishy in the family system. While I appreciated this in-depth presentation, I wished Lahad had given more follow-up information. What happened with Judy and Gabrielle after this creative supervision? I think expressive arts therapists may want to research the idea, as it would help us better demonstrate the effectiveness of expressive arts in supervision.
The international flavor of this book was inspiring, as Mooli is an expressive arts therapist from Israel and a consultant to UNICEF. He has worked in Israel and Northern Ireland. Besides having a chapter on each modality, Lahad also presented his supervisory work with crisis intervention teams. Here he deals with the phenomena that Judith Herman coined in Trauma and Recovery, the secondary trauma of the therapist when providing therapy for those who suffer from post-traumatic stress. In this chapter (pp.103-105), Lahad describes the very sensitive process he created for these workers. First he explores their emotions of hope, despair fear and courage through movement, and ends with their poetic response to kinesthetic explorations. His approach very sensitively utilizes solid trauma theory. However, Lahad never weaves this theory into the text, which could have expanded and deepened the readers understanding of the perfect marriage between trauma work and expressive arts therapy that Melinda Meyer has developed. This chapter intrigued me, but also disappointed me, as it was so slim. Lahad seems to have a great deal to offer in this arena, and perhaps will expand on this in later publication.
In chapter eight, the author applies his“ Basic Ph Mode” (Lahad’s multi-modal approach assessing how one copes with life) to help the supervisor understand how the supervisee perceives the world. I liked the idea of using this model in supervision. It seems to have a strong cognitive base that can be interwoven with an arts process. Exploring the parallel process between the supervisory relationship and the supervisees’ therapeutic presence could be strongest use of this model. This would allow the supervisee to see their intersubjective experience, and how they bring this to each relationship, in a non-defensive way. Bringing in this theory and perhaps one more investigation of the intersubjective relationship between the supervisor and the supervisee and how this may parallel the therapeutic relationship, would have deepened the book.
Lahad is a very skilled and intuitive supervisor. His discussion of his supervision sessions is easy to read and understand. He is skillful in describing how these arts processes aided the therapist in a problematic situation. Many times I wanted to follow each of the supervisees he presented and know more of what happened with their clients after these supervisory interventions. As mentioned, this would be a good area of research in expressive arts therapy.
As I stated, this book is long overdue in our field and is great for a beginning supervisor to gain ideas and ignite their creative process in supervision. However, I do wish that Lahad had deepened each chapter by presenting a stronger theoretical base on trauma or the intersubjective field.
This book is greatly needed in our profession and will help us “tend the field” and supervise creatively. I appreciate Mooli Lahad’s endeavor by creating a book that bridges the multi arts processes with the theoretical world of supervision. I think this book is a must for the beginning supervisor and can stimulate the seasoned supervisors’ creative process on how to keep the arts an integral part of the supervision process. I hope to see more and deeper explorations like this in the future!
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Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy:
Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives
Edited by Stephen K. Levine and Ellen G. Levine
(Philadelphia, Pa., Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Ltd., 1999, pages 275, $35.00 paperback)
Reviewed by Kate T. Donohue
Journal of Sandplay Therapy. Vol. 9 (2), 2000
While reading Stephen and Ellen Levine’s book Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy: Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives, I found myself imaging I had been invited to Babette’s Feast, a culminating masterly presentation of the honed experience of Expressive Arts Therapy masters and pioneers. This book is a long awaited gift to the thirty-year-old field of Expressive Arts Therapy. The editors attempt to give form to the field without deadening its creative soul, thus allowing expressive arts to remain vital as a “work in progress” (p.8).
The editors of this feast invited twelve of the pioneers and innovators in the field, from Europe, Canada, Israel and the United States, to offer a “multiplicity of perspectives which represent the field of Expressive Arts Therapy at this point in time” (p. 9). The book is separated into two sections: Part One: “Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives,” and Part Two: “Clinical Perspectives”. The second part is also deliciously full of theoretical considerations and perspectives that help guide the authors’ clinical applications.
As an expressive arts therapist and educator, I greatly appreciated this savory sampling of perspectives. Each chapter has history and depth. The authors do not simplify their ideas into a cookbook, leaving room for the reader to be inspired but not directed. The Levines are two pioneer expressive arts therapists, trainers and authors, and a perfect choice for editors of this type of book. Both of these artist-therapists have the global and interdisciplinary perspective and sensitivity that created the temenos that would foster the emergence of this contribution.
For those unfamiliar with the thirty-year history of Expressive Arts Therapy, the introduction offers a good appetizer. They trace our roots back to the early 1970s and the work of Paolo Knill, Norma Canner and Shaun McNiff, who founded the Lesley College Graduate School program in Expressive Therapy. This new program moved away from a specialization in a particular art therapy by developing a philosophy that embraced an interdisciplinary approach to the arts, indigenous healing systems, contemporary philosophical developments (phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstructionism), and community art-making within the program as an essential component of this approach. Following the conception of the Lesley Expressive Therapy program, numerous other training programs sprang forth, in the both North America and Europe Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS) were established.
Expressive Arts Therapy was a blossoming as a profession. By 1994, expressive arts therapists and trainers knew they needed a professional community for the exchange of ideas, research and professional development of this intermodal, multi-arts approach. These founding members formed the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA). IEATA exists to support the professional use of integrative, multi-modal arts processes for personal and community transformation. They provide a global forum for professional dialogue and promote guiding principles for the professional practice of the expressive arts.
The second part of the introduction will entice both newcomers and seasoned expressive arts therapists as the Levines grapple, as we all do, with clarifying but not limiting the definition of Expressive Arts Therapy. I was moved by the first aspect of their exploration of definition.
“ Expressive Arts therapy is grounded not in particular techniques or media, but in the capacity of the arts to respond to human suffering. The fundamental concept of aesthetic responsibility (Knill, Barba and Fuchs, 1995) implies an ability to use appropriate media for therapeutic purposes. The expressive arts therapist must therefore be prepared to work with sound, image, movement, enactment and text as they are required in the encounter with the lived situation of the client.” (P.11).
I have found this concept of aesthetic responsibility to be the essence of Expressive Arts Therapy, and one that clearly defines our distinct character. Each of the clinical application contributors emphasized the next point that the Levines cite: the importance of the lived bodily/sensory experience as it unites with the imagination as one moves toward a creative source of meaning. We call upon “poiesis” linking us to the common origin of artistic expression. The expressive arts therapist specializes in the “junctures at which one mode of artistic expressive needs to give way to, or be supplemented by another.”(P.12). This is the Intermodal or multi-arts approach. Stated another way, the expressive arts therapist emphasizes “low skill, high sensitivity” (Knill). Expressive Arts Therapy embraces these concepts as the key parts of their identity. While giving the profession an essential form, the editors’ definition leaves the field open to creative interpretation and inspiration.
Through the voices of Paolo Knill, Shaun McNiff, Majken Jacoby and Steve Levine in Part One, the editors help the reader grapple with the one the hardest questions in Expressive Arts Therapy, that of our philosophical and theoretical base. Of particular controversy is the relevance of psychological theory. Starting Chapter One, Levine challenges the philosophical views of the Greeks and Europeans and stresses that expressive arts therapist create their own theoretical principals.
Paolo Knill, the grandfather of Expressive Arts Therapy, in Chapter Two moves us closer to the idea of developing our own expressive arts philosophical base by exploring the imagination, play and this Intermodal language. Knill suggests we shy away from the paradigm of seeing the use of arts in therapy as “superior” to other therapies. He suggests we create a new paradigm. His new paradigm focuses on “being in the world” where art combined with a healing relationship helps us “come to be with and pass away suffering” (p. 37). Consequently, Expressive Arts Therapy offers “soul nourishment” (p.49) and can provide us with a “preventative diet as well as medicine to ensure human well-being” (p.52). In his vast contributions to the profession, Knill has given us a new paradigm and language which has helped to make expressive arts clearly distinctive and understood as a profession.
Though we leave the philosophical and theoretical perspectives behind, Part Two is still rich with these ideas and concepts. In part one, the editors questioned the relevance of psychological theory. The authors in Part Two emphasize their psychological underpinning. Perhaps it is important to acknowledge whose “backs” we are standing on and still create own new paradigm. For in scientific thought, similar paradigms do coexist. It is important to acknowledge the psychology influences that most of the authors stated helped shape their ideas and work in Expressive Arts Therapy; such pioneers as: C.G. Jung. D.W. Winncott, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Roberto Assaggioli, Jacob Moreno, Arthur Lowen, Paolo Knill and Steve Levine.
Part Two is more than clinical applications; the contributors portray their journeys towards becoming an expressive arts therapist, their philosophical underpinning and their style of Expressive Arts Therapy. Each contributor is rooted in the arts and uses multi-arts, body-oriented approach, but many seem solidly rooted in one primary modality with the other modalities woven in around the primary one. Many of the contributors could be seem as movement based expressed arts therapist, or music-based, etc. This section presents numerous case studies and programs that use the arts in various settings and addresses a variety of issues. This section is essential reading for any one entering the field of expressive arts, and provides “soul nourishment” for the more seasoned expressive arts therapist!
In Norway and Israel, Melinda Meyer and Yaacov Naor present their Expressive Arts Therapy work with survivors of trauma. Melinda Meyer, founder of the Norwegian Institute for Expressive Art Therapy, psychodramatist and expressive arts therapist, shows us how Expressive Arts Therapy helped Bosian refugees who sought asylum in Norway. Those who live in exile lose everything, “the house of the family, the house of community and the house of the human body” (p.244). Melinda moves through the process she developed to help those in “exile from the body,” re-integrate a sense of the house of the body. This program was the first healing encounter the refugees experienced after their trauma. Melinda uses this transitional space of “waiting room” and reframes it into the playroom in which survivors can reintegrate the body. She also delves into the “therapist in the ruins” (p.252) and discusses how the expressive arts helps the therapist communicate with different cultures and deal personally with the horror they re-experience with their clients of trauma.
Yaacov Naor, founder of ISIS-Israel, expressive arts therapist and psychodramatist, introduces us to his workshops in Israel and Germany, “Confronting the Holocaust through Psychodrama” designed for Jewish children of Holocaust survivors and Germans of the generation after World War II. Yaacov helps understand the trauma that this generation experiences, and the healing power of the theatre. This chapter is incredibly moving as Yaacov is a child of two Holocaust survivors and also tells how his own story was changed by one of the encounters in these workshops. Yaacov quotes Paolo Knill in closing, “peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the ability to live with differences.”(p.238).
Meyer and Naor truly depict the cross cultural and transcendent power of Expressive Arts Therapy in healing severe trauma. These are two chapters not to be missed in this book.
The power of sound is explored in two chapters, by Paul Newham from England and by Margareta Warja of Sweden. These two chapters explore the potency of “therapeutic voicework” and “music as mother” through expressive and receptive music therapy. Both Newham and Warja are solidly based in artistic and psychological theory and emphasize the relationship between voice, music, touch and movement.
Paul Newham, founding director of the International Association for Voice Movement Therapy, therapist, and teacher, traces the development of therapeutic voicework grounded in avant theatre and portrays case studies that demonstrate its effectiveness.
Margareta Warja, training director of the Swedish Expressive Arts Therapy Training Institute, and music psychotherapist schooled in expressive music therapy and the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery in Music, gives a strong developmental look through theory and case studies at the mothering function of music as it travels the pre-verbal layers. Margareta provides a wonderful exploration of music and the co-transference relationship.
Through her love of music, she shows how “Music, the queen of time, takes us to the never-ending now”(p. 171 &192), heals trauma and builds internal and community power.
Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy ends with an article by co-editor Ellen Levine, co-founder of ISIS-Toronto, pioneer expressive arts therapist and core faculty at EGS, interweaving child play therapy and Expressive Arts Therapy. I was intrigued with Ellen’s ability to weave psychoanalytic theory and expressive arts, and grapple with the use of interpretation as tool in the expressive arts process. I also appreciated how she was able to critique herself and acknowledge two different expressive arts approaches to the same child’s situation. She demonstrates through case studies the connection between child psychotherapy and expressive arts therapy, “ the capacity of the imagination to shape experience” (p.272). I was surprised that Ellen did not mention the use of Sandplay with children. As an Expressive Arts Therapist who works with children, I was disappointed that the Levines did not include a chapter on Sandplay Therapy with children from Lauren Cunningham or Kay Bradway. I was also intrigued by this omission. Is sandplay considered play therapy? Does it seem less based in the art discipline itself? Only the California Institute of Integral Studies includes Sandplay Therapy class as part of their curriculum. This omission aroused my curiosity. I would to see a chapter on Sandplay Therapy and its place in the world of Expressive Arts Therapy in the next edition of this book, but more importantly in dialogues in this journal!
Even though this is masterly accomplishment and completes a missing link in the field of expressive arts, there are a few ideas that needed more development in this book. After a great feast, one desires after dinner conversation to help digest the meal. I wish the Levines had added a final chapter that would help with digesting this great feast. I think the chapter could include a healthy dose of comparing and contrasting the approaches. I would have loved the Levines, both creative and independent thinkers, to dialogue with each other about the field and the contributors’ gifts. I also would have liked contributors to share a little more about their trials and errors in developing their approaches. The only contributor that hinted at this was Ellen Levine. Many of us are frequently asked challenging questions about the profession, and I was glad that Natalie Rogers used this as template to explore her approach. I wish there had been more of this type of serious grappling with the difficult questions that are posed to expressive arts therapists. I appreciated Shaun McNIff’s ideas about arts based inquiry, but was left with the idea that Expressive Arts Therapy is a well-researched field. As an Expressive Arts Therapy educator, I know this is not the case. I wish there had been room in this first section to discuss the research already conducted, as well as that still needed, in the field. Perhaps a closing chapter could have addressed these points that need more time for exploration.
Even though Stephen Levine posed a non-foundational base to expressive arts, I think Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy poses a paradox for it offers a solid investigation of the foundation that has been created over the last thirty years by the contributors to the field. I enjoyed engaging with this paradox. Perhaps the Levines used this irony to keep the profession alive and vital. The reader has a delicious feast in store as they engage with this book. I have enjoyed and appreciated the creativity, care and compassion that went into the creation of this collection. I will look forward to the next encounter with this work-in progress, and to being invited to another of Babette’s Feasts in “Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy II”!
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The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy
Working with Movement, Metaphor and Meaning
by Daria Halprin
(Philadelphia, PA,
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Ltd.,
2003,
248 pages,
ISBN: 1 84310 737,
Price $24.95)
Reviewed by Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D., REAT
Arts in Psychotherapy. Vol. 30(4), 2004
“Our bodies contain our life stories just as they contain bones, muscle, organ, nerves and blood.” (Halprin, 2003, p.17).
In her new book, The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy: Working with Movement, Metaphor and Meaning, Daria Halprin creates bridges between the body, art making and conscious living with an architectural precision. Her book is a welcome addition to the growing contributions by the pioneers in the field of expressive arts therapy, and it provides an extremely clear map of her movement-oriented approach. We enter this map through the body as she describes her life story and how it influences her approach. As the body’s architect, she builds a strong foundation with her philosophy. Daria creates a multi-layered structure as she describes this approach and then, embellishes it with stories, case studies and applications.
Daria begins her book with a personal bridge from her life experience as the daughter of the dancer, Anna and the environmental architect, Lawrence Halprin, to her expressive arts therapy work. Raised in the epicenter of shifting cultures in the Northern California avant-garde political/art scene, the author reveals the passions and wounds that fueled her approach. Here we see how she begins to use her art, dance and creative process to address her suffering, which is the foundation of expressive arts therapy.
As Jack Weller points out in his foreword, Daria directly addresses one of the major challenges of expressive arts therapy, “ the lack of theory, of a developed historical and theoretical base of operations” (p.9). In Part Two: Roots and Cross-Pollination, the author constructs the historical foundation of her philosophy. Starting with shamanism, she addresses three pivotal questions: “How do we understand and explore the tensions and conflicts between opposing forces in the individual and in society? How can these forces be reconciled in creative and productive ways, and what part does the body, emotion and imagination play in this search?” (P.36).
In each chapter of Part Two, Daria interlaces many artistic and psychological perspectives. With her chapter on psychology, she highlights the Psychoanalytic, Existential/Humanistic, and Transpersonal ideas that have supported her. This chapter is an excellent overview of numerous dense theories. Daria distills the essence of each orientation and explains how each distillation strengthens her approach. This chapter forges a strong bridge between the arts and psychology.
Giving due respect to the uniqueness of her body-oriented approach, there are two chapters dedicated to Somatic Psychology and Dance. Again, the author provides an impressive survey of this body-centered approach to psychology and art. Making the bridge between dance and psychology, she loops back and forth between dancers and dance therapists, exploring the power and magnitude of a body orientation with a dancer’s grace and flow.
In the final chapter of Part Two, the “Art World’s” shifts and tensions are explored as cultural fluctuations that gave impetus to the expressive arts therapy paradigm. This paradigm emphasizes a postmodern approach of de-centering and interconnections. Daria pays special homage to the contributions of Paolo Knill, one of the pioneers of the field of expressive arts therapy. He has been the trailblazer teaching us about weaving the arts and passionately placing the arts in the center of healing work. Standing solidly in the body and in the expressive arts therapy paradigm, the author develops her special brand of Movement-oriented Expressive Arts Therapy. “Movement-based Expressive Arts Therapy works quite actively to bring ‘inner’ sensations, feelings and image to ‘outer’ action by employing a full range of creative arts…. This approach also focuses on the creative process as psychological mirror….”(P.65).
As an Expressive Arts therapist and educator, I am deeply appreciative of Part Two. This section is a clear and well-distilled description of her philosophical underpinnings. It will help young expressive arts therapists understand the historical roots of our field. Daria has given us a wonderful example of how our philosophical ideas can fuel and influence the ways we choose to work.
Now that the integrity of the philosophical foundation has been secured, the author moves into the heart of her work: the actual practice. In Part Three, I sensed some ancestral roots emerging: the somatic architect seemed to be designing here. Daria develops an intricate system in her approach. She starts with the importance and power of the creative process, imagination, the unconscious and metaphor. Then she layers this with the three levels of response and awareness through the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body and their interconnections. With an elegant precision, Daria draws a map of one’s inner experience, then interlaces it with a five part process: identification, confrontation, release, change and growth. This map gives us a way of “tracking and facilitating how the internal experience is expressed in the exterior world” (p.122). As a person moves along the five-part process, she is engaged in an integrated arts process that Daria coined the “Psychokinetic Imagery Process” of Movement, Drawing and Poetic Dialogues.
Each one of these layers pulsates in Part Three with pictures of movement, drawing and poems. I agree with Jack Weller in his introduction that it was hard to sit still and read this embodied approach. I wanted to move, draw and write and did at times try the examples of processes so generously shared in these later chapters. Part Three is very inspiring as we witness through photo, image and poem the transformations of psychic energies through the five part Psychokinetic process.
In chapter’s 10 and 11, “The Body Parts: Metaphors and Living Artfully with the Wounded Self”, the author maps the body and how it can metaphorically tell our stories. These chapters are excellent for those unfamiliar with movement to learn a step-by-step process of body-oriented expressive arts therapy work. Here we can see that within her very structured directive frame she keeps the creative process alive by providing space for the imagination and unconscious to find their metaphor and voice. She describes this as the "symbolic resonances" of the body.
As the book draws to a close, the author begins to flesh out her approach by offering several case studies. I appreciated these depictions, but wished she had given us more flesh-and-blood case presentations. I had hoped she might grapple more deeply with the issues that all creative and expressive arts therapists deal with each day - how to translate theory to practice. Having experienced this approach, I know personally how powerful it is, but it may not work for all clients without modification. This would have been a good opportunity to discuss why her structured approach was a better choice for these people than a more process and flow-oriented approach, such as Authentic Movement. In Fran Levy’s book, Dance and other Expressive Arts Therapies, she gives us in-depth case studies, which weave arts and psychological theory into the discussion. Daria gave us such a great distillation of theories, I would have liked her to have woven the theory into the case presentation and perhaps give us more of a sense of how this approach can be used with different issues or populations. Perhaps this might be the second book for Daria, a case study presentation, demonstrating her years of experience with this approach.
As I write this review, our world in engaged in war. So the author’s final chapter could not be more timely, “Art as a Healing Force in the World”. As we struggle in a time of war and attempt to heal from the trauma of war, the arts have proven they will lead the way, helping us, “…celebrate what life has given and become the human beings we are meant to be.” (P.231).
Daria’s book is wonderful contribution to the field of expressive arts therapy. It is an excellent introduction to the ways the body can lead and how other arts can be integrated into an expressive arts process. For those seasoned in expressive arts therapy, it offers an in-depth architectural map of an expressive art therapy approach. I would encourage my students, colleagues and those interested in learning more about expressive arts therapy to read this book. With architectural precision and dancer’s grace, she offers us a method in which our bodies and the expressive arts can so eloquently tell and heal our life stories.
Reference
Levy, F. (Ed.). (1995). Dance and Other Expressive Therapies. New York: Routledge.
Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D., REAT
Psychologist and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in a Jungian Oriented Private Practice
Founding Expressive Arts Therapy Faculty Member at the California Institute of Integral Studies
Present Address: 57 Post St, Ste. 602, San Francisco, CA 94104 US
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Music: Keynote of the Human Spirit
By Ruth B. Skaggs
(Publish America, Baltimore, Maryland,
189 pages,
2004,
$19.95)
Reviewed by Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D., REAT
Arts in Psychotherapy. Vol. 32(3), 2005
When the Persian poet Rumi talks about the “Beloved”, I experience the sense of an enveloping love. I had the same experience reading Ruth B. Skaggs’ Music: Keynote of the Human Spirit, as a reader, exploring her love affair both personally and professionally with music. Skaggs’ quotes a Sufi master that “…. the person who know the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the universe” and uses this as the goal for her book “…an attempt to explore the meaning of music in the whole of humanity” (p.11). It is valiant attempt in which she nearly succeeds.
The author provides a broad brush overview of the universe of sound from its beginning, including the theory of music therapy to its applications clinically, spiritually, archetypally and societally. This book is a wonderful book for interested newcomers to the world of music, and for beginning students in both music and expressive arts therapy. As someone who has studied various aspects of music therapy related to my work in expressive arts therapy, I found the broad-brush reviews only whetted my appetite and that I wanted to read more about the actual research studies.
The strength of this book is in the clinical application and case studies that the author provides. It is clear she is a seasoned clinician and her skill shines here. Skaggs focuses on receptive music processes and does not adhere to more behavioral approaches as many music therapists do, nor does she venture into the power of improvisational music. She presents receptive music processes similar to the Bonney Method of Guided Imagery through Music (GIM) and emphasizes the need for a deep understanding of the structure and impact of music on the human Psych and Soma. “ The person untrained in music therapy can do harm by playing around with a technique that reaches so deeply into one’s psyche” (p.29).
With her training evident in each chapter, the author recommends receptive music processes with which the reader could experiment. With each clinical topic, Skaggs also shares many small vignettes from her music therapy practice. There are two examples of very moving experiences in her clients’ lives with music that she shares with us. In chapter three, “The Archetypal Nature of Music”, she explores many archetypal symbols. One is the womb that seems related to the kivas of the Southwestern Native Americans as a place of safety and nurturing. This archetype, like music, holds the mothering function to envelop and comfort. Skaggs has a great deal of experience with music, imagery and addictions, and recalls a time when she worked with recovering addicts in treatment center. During a music and imagery process, a man experiences himself as “being in his mother’s womb. ‘I didn’t want to leave its safety. It is scary out there.’ Music provided a womb-like state (p.53).” Music and the recovery center became his womb, his safety and his first sense of self in his recovery process.
In Chapter 8, “Dying with Grace”, the author explores how music and its emerging images can help many patients face their fear of death and bring easier transition. A young man who was dying of AIDS was facing death with tremendous fear. Skaggs played Brahms Symphony Number 1, which brought the man face to face with his fear of death. She followed it by Mahler’s Symphony Number 2 (often referred to as “The Resurrection Symphony”). In this process, her client discovered a relationship to his spirit. “What a joke the universe has played on me. All this time I thought I was my body. Now I know it isn’t true. My body has been dependent upon spirit.” (p.141). He was no longer afraid of death and was grateful to his reconnection to his spirit. Here Skaggs embodies her strident recommendation that the therapist must have a firm grasp of the world of music in order to enter into these powerful arenas of emotion and “do no harm” (p.29).
I know Ruth Skaggs from her work with the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and am familiar with her music based expressive arts therapy approaches. In her book, she mentions very briefly her work with visual arts and music. I would have appreciated a deeper theoretical and clinical exploration of her style of integrating other arts into her music-based practice. This would have made a great contribution to the expressive arts therapy field as well.
Ruth Skaggs has a profound love affair with music and shares this in her book. She feels that integrating music not only in therapy, but in education, medicine, and drug treatment, could help us with the “global changes we need for our survival” (p.159). With this short yet meaty book, she had made a very good case for the importance of music in our lives as well as providing us with rich clinical information and research. After reading her book, it is easy to understand why music is Ruth Skaggs’ “Beloved”.
Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D. REAT core faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Expressive Arts Therapy Program in San Francisco.
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