Music Therapy Today

December 2002

Music Therapy Research

At University Ren
Descartes - Paris V -
Which Sorts Of
Satisfactions Are Given,
Produced, Through Music
Therapy ?

Edith Lecourt

Abstract
This is a general presentation of the development of music therapy
research at University.
It took a long time to promote music therapy from clinical practice to the
level of research within the music therapy field. And it took as much effort
to gain the recognition of this topic on an Academic level. At this moment
the institutional aspect is essential. We will develop this point and be
attentive and interested to participants experiences on this level. These
last years music therapy research became a natural topic in Academic
selection in clinical psychology, whereas in musicology the situation is
progressively changing in some Departments.
In the second part of the presentation we will emphasize the specificity of
music therapy in the analysis of patients sonorous/musical productions,
the importance given to audio or/and video analysis, and the necessity of
developing new tools for research. On the theoretical leveller will
observe how our psychoanalytical background paradoxically (?) helped
the recognition of music therapy research in our country. Finally we will
present a panel of the actual situation, of the main topics, the recent com-
pleted researches and the projects in progress.

1
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

It took a long time to promote music therapy from

clinical practice to the level of research within the
music therapy field.
In France, clinical applications were officially developed in psychiatry
thanks to Dr. Philippe Pinel, the founder of the psychiatry, followed by
his disciples, since the very beginning of the nineteen century. It was both
receptive and active music therapy. This author considered that this use
of music participated to create a link between the subjectivity of the
patient (his story) and the social world: music therapy was a tool of
recovering and rehabilitation.

It seems that it took more time to develop experiments in music peda-

gogy for handicapped: even if the name of this teacher of keyboard, in
the early twentieths, Henriette Lafarge (1936), did not become famous as
many others did. I consider indeed her first experiment with her handi-
capped daughter - and its development with clients - as still very rele-
vant:playing keyboard with the childs hands inside the musicians hands
in a
corporal relationship, introducing by the touch and the movements of
hands and fingers to classical pieces of music, their gestalt and interpreta-
tion, instead of technical exercises. This created a very profound musical
relation, as a musical envelop which stimulated the handicapped child, in
his/her progression, participating more and more with his /her own hands
and fingers.

These two principles experiments can be considered as the roots of

modern music therapy, clinical and pedagogical, in France.

In a first time, the accumulation of experiences - the most of them not

without good results - was, and is still true in some places, the paradigm

Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V - Which Sorts Of

Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 2
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

for research. That is to say: repetition of practices, multiplication of

cases, and recording of satisfactions.

And the practice of music therapy generally give a good amount of satis-
factions.

The problem appears as a scientific question with the necessity of a justi-

fication of the processes in a clinical point of view, either to build a
model of understanding of what music therapy is, a relevant theory, or to
precise in what cases it really works.

At this point I must say, satisfaction - the clients satisfaction or /and

the music therapists satisfaction - is not a scientific criterion.

Scientific researches have demonstrated that, on this level, about any sort
of psychotherapy is of equivalent value, gives equivalent results. And, on
a relational level, we know that satisfaction is currently based on illu-
sion, seduction, fusional experience, if not on affective exploitation.
Nowadays, ethical questions about sects procedures make us aware of the
danger of some of them, even when adepts feel enthousiastic.

Moreover, we all know the power of the placebo effect for many of our
remedies, and music therapy is not protected from this effect.

Consequently, the clients satisfaction is only one argument to comfort

music therapy practice and this satisfaction has to be analysed: which
relational and technical processes is it the result? This is a central topic
for the research in this field.

The psychoanalysis has given the model of the transference process as a

tool to understand some of these satisfactions (and unsatisfactions!). And
I want to emphasize that music is not an insignificant mediation which
could be replaced by any other. The aesthetical dimension of music in

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 3
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

any culture is part of the psychological and pedagogical processes occur-

ring in music therapy. More precisely, it gives a special coloration to the
transference we observe in these practices. Satisfaction is a result of a
common idealisation between the music therapist and the client (1998,
2001).

I think that the principal part of the resistance of so many music thera-
pists to research in this field is not a lack of tools for research and of
training, but, more fundamentally, the avoidance of the narcissistic
wound which should be the discovery of the signification of this satisfac-
tion.

I remember that my determination to make researches in this field roots

in the expression of satisfaction of a severely depressed woman, who said
she recovered after ten sessions of receptive music therapy with me! At
that time I was still a student in psychology, but I knew that such a magi-
cal recovery was not a good therapeutically result.

It took a long time to find efficient clues for research

and to promote them to the Academic level
The first experiments made in France were physiological and were devel-
oped by dentists (one dentist was co-founder of our association) who
used music during the ninety seventieths to soothe down clients anxiety
and to calm pain (Gabai, 1968-69). Finally for this same goals new
musics were composed, and even simple sounds used. At the same time,
other applications were developed for the preparation of childbirth. In
these two developments, the final use of sounds reveals that even with
physiological parameters, which are more objective than moods, the

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 4
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

musical experience was too rich to give scientific assurance and clinical
security.

The second experiments were behavioral. They try to answer the ques-
tion: Are the subjective responses to music precisely linked to pieces of
music? Is it possible to give a repertoire of the pieces of music the more
efficient for music therapy? Is it possible to change the clients mood or/
and behavior by using these pieces?

Following the American experiments of the two last world wars in this
field (Schoen, Seashore, Murray), we tried to precise this link about some
pieces of music chosen for their clinical effectiveness. The results of this
experiment were revealing the complexity of such a link, and especially
the differences appearing when personality factors were simultaneously
tested (1969 in Lecourt 1977).

At the same time, M.Imberty (1980), a french music psychologist worked

with the experimental method on the analysis of the semantic linked to
very short extracts of pieces of Debussy and Ravel, comparing their
structures. The complexity of the results (after years of work) which con-
cerned only some minutes of the musical repertoire, finished to convince
me that this was a wrong way of research for music therapy (especially
receptive music therapy), at least for me...

It took years to transform my point of view, but the motor of this new
research was clear: I needed an understanding which I could not find
either in the literature of this field or in my practice.

The turning point was to ask no more the behavioral results of music lis-
tening or playing, but to ask the music itself, not a peculiar piece of
music supposed to have peculiar power on human behavior, but rather

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 5
 Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

music considered as a subjective experience, and music as a peculiar

common code. Two main questions emerged at that time:

1. When is a sonorous stimulus perceived as music by myself, by the cli-

ent, by the group of clients? Or, said differently, what is music for a
person, for a group, for a culture?
2. What link could be find between the musical structure and the struc-
ture of the psyche, link that could support and give sense to the effec-
tiveness of music therapy in some clinical situation?
These new huge questions occupied me for years, but they rapidly
opened to experiments giving answers, and this was very motivating.

QUESTION 1. To answer to first question it needs an analysis of the subjective human

acoustical experience, from noise, sound, silence, to music, on a develop-
mental point of view (throughout life phases, beginning with the foetus).

The researches made were:

the study of the literature about these questions

an experiment made during the seventieths by Dr. Feijoo on the foetus
(and many other researches on this point since)
sonorous experiments in architecture (I work since that time with the
Center of Research on Sonorous Space in the School for Architecture
of Grenoble).
This was a pleasant occasion to realize that some of our researches were
concordant, and some of the new concepts we imagine exchangeable
from one field to the other.

sonorous experiments in music, contemporary music (place of noises,

timbers etc.), and especially concrete music, music composed only
with natural sounds: Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry with whom I
worked during a workshop.
the clinical ground of the research was a fine observation of the behav-
ior and reactions of profound handicapped patients to noises, sounds
and music - mainly non verbal patients -: autistic children, psychotic
regressed adults, multihandicapped patients, and Alzheimer patients.

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 6
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

Finally, I proposed, in 1980, in training situations, a clinical group

experiment, to explore the relation to sounds of individuals and
groups. This procedure uses sonorous free improvisations, their
recordings, and verbal expression. The recordings permitted precise
analysis and comparison.
Since that time, hundred of groups have been recorded, and in different
cultures. Next experience will be in Japan in some weeks.

This procedure proved to be especially relevant for this exploration of the

structuring from sound to music, giving like a radiography of the situa-
tion of sonorous relationships between people at a moment of the situa-
tion, and the evolution through time (repetition of improvisations during
the workshop). Quantitative and qualitative results have been published
since that time.

The main answer to my question is the moment of the emergency of

music in a group, the moment the group perceives its production as
being music (in these experiments the verbalisation about the experi-
ence is a good help for the analysis).

In fact I have to concede that this subjective definition of music occurred

phenomenologically as a magical experience, a group satisfaction based
on a fusional relation. But the creation of the music of the group appeared
as a second sort of music: a process beginning in this first fusion and
leading to a real composition coming from the inside of the group uncon-
scious process. So satisfaction appeared objectively to be linked to the
experience of what is music. But the next improvisations show that this
mood was a defence against the anxiety aroused by the group situation. A
clinical work has to take place behind this first level of satisfaction, the
magic of music, throughout the group compositional process and the
emergency of a new, differentiated form of musical satisfaction for the
members of the group.

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 7
 Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

QUESTION 2, This lead us to the second question:

In fact this experimental procedure finally gives support to the two ques-
tions, as the group dynamic and the development of a musical structure -
beginning with the first noises and sounds explored by the group -
appeared simultaneously.

It is why the recordings of the improvisations developed throughout a

workshop give a radiography of both.

These results were completed by a research on the group structure of

music, that is to say the vertical, simultaneous play only possible in this
sonorous code, contrarily to verbal expression. To explore this structure I
had to make a research on the place of monody and polyphony in differ-
ent cultures, especially in India, where I went to learn some bases of
music and dance, and in the occidental Middle Ages: the passage from
monody, from the Gregorian chant, to polyphony, the motetus. This last
research consisted of the analysis of the Manuscript of Montpellier
(XIVth century), you will find it in one of my books (1994).

The link from the group unconscious processes to the psyche was thus
experimentally initiated. The complement came from the psychoanalyti-
cal theorisation of group processes. I will not have time to develop that
point now and it is also published (1993).

These two researches lead to the signification of the place given to mon-
ody or polyphony in a culture at one time: the link from music structure
to social groups. Finally, it shows how a model of musical satisfaction is
culturally defined.

These relations between the culture, the unconscious processes, the

music structure, as they appear in a special improvisational procedure,
open to an understanding of music therapeutic processes (defences

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 8
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

included) and to precisians both of its medical and musical usefulness

and limits.

Conclusion:
This long travel through my personal researches illustrates two important
points:

it generally takes a lot of time to find the good question. That is to

say a question which opens research and discovery (not repeating for-
mal knowledge).
music therapy is a crossroads of many different fields: I needed clini-
cal psychology, music psychology, music personal practice, clinical
practice, psychoanalysis, group analysis, musicology and intercultural
researches.
This crossroads explains both the richness of music therapy and its com-
plexity.

Finally this demonstration was the key which, in France, opened the Aca-
demic recognition of this field of research an opened to the development
of doctoral researches on this topic either from departments of musicol-
ogy or psychology.

The collaboration between musicologists, psychologists and music thera-

pists developed since 1985, through academic researches, doctorates,
thesis and the organisations of common seminars and colloquium. The
next one will take place on the 31th november and the 1rst of december
of this year on Music, Freudian, Jungian and Lacanian echoes.

Our Laboratory in the University Ren Descartes (ex. Sorbonne) presents

five of these researches during this European Congress from Anne Marie
Duvivier, Gabrielle Fruchard, Adrienne Lerner, Lony Schiltz, and myself
in a common research with Pr psychiatry Philippe Dardenne.

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Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 9
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

The main current topics are:

. the evaluation of the sonorous and musical world of autistic children

. the sonorous and musical world of Alzheimer patients - musical
memory.
. the sonorous and musical listening qualities and capacities of school
children and adolescents with special difficulties.
. an exploration of families group musics.

We published with Christine Lapoujade, in the Revue de Musicothrapie,

the updated repertoire of the French researches in Music Therapy.

Satisfactions in music therapy practice are multiple. One of the first

clients satisfaction is often part of a defence against the therapeutic pro-
cess (even, sometimes the choice of music therapy itself). The idealiza-
tion associated to music is often also a trap both for the client and the
music therapist. Both have to be analysed. The change occurring in a
therapeutic process is always a threat for the individual narcissism. But
the final satisfaction is not linked to achievements, but rather to the
recovery (or discovery) of a free way of feeling, thinking, living (in the
limits of the individual potential).

Bibliography:
M. Gabai - Psycho-sophrologie et musique, in Information dentaire, 9,
1968 and 24, 1969.

M.Imberty - Entendre la musique, smantique psychologique de la

musique, Paris, Dunod, 1980

Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V - Which Sorts Of

Satisfactions Are Given, Produced, Through Music Therapy ? 10
Lecourt, E (2002) Music Therapy Research At University Ren Descartes - Paris V Music Therapy Today (Online)
avaiable at http://musictherapyworld.net

H.Lafarge - Lart de dvelopper le sentiment musical chez lenfant et

pour amliorer lanormal, Paris, Ed. Association des Amis
dH.Lafarge, 1936

Ch. Lapoujade, E.Lecourt - Les recherches en musicothrapie en France

de 1970 1993, Catalogue des ressources : analyse thmatique
et bibliographie commente, La Revue de Musicothrapie, vol.
XIV, N4, 1994, 110p.

E. Lecourt - La pratique de la musicothrapie, Paris, E.S.F., 1977

E.Lecourt - Analyse de groupe et musicothrapie, Paris, E.S.F., 1993

E.Lecourt - Lexprience musicale, rsonances psychanalytiques, Paris,

LHarmattan, 1994

E.Lecourt - The role of aesthetics in countertransference ; a comparison

of active versus receptive music therapy, In K.Bruscia The
Dynamics of Music Psychotherapy, U.S.A., Barcelona Publish-
ers, 1998, 137-159.

E.Lecourt - The aesthetic dimension in the Art Therapies, release or

dfence, In Proceedings of the European Art Therapies Confer-
ence, ECARTE, 2001.

M.Santiago Delefosse - Rpertoire des Revues Francophones de Psy-

chologie, un outil destination des auteurs, ed. Socit
Franaise de Psychologie et Hommes et Perspectives/Martin
Mdia, 1999 (cf La Revue de Musicothrapie).

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