Music Therapy Clinician

05/03/2024

An interesting new book to check out. I'm in the process of reviewing it (and there are a few reviews out there already). Definitely worth starting a discussion about mistakes in music therapy!

By Editors: Avi Gilboa and Laurien Hakvoort Authors: Tania Balil, Jasmine Edwards, Carlijn van der Eng, Mark Ettenberger, Avi Gilboa, Laurien Hakvoort, Brian Harris, Connie Isenberg, Xi-Jing Chen, Jiri Kantor, Aksana Kavaliova-Moussi, Maya Marom, Ai Nakatsuka, Anna Neuwirthova, Helen Oosthuizen, Edw...

30/01/2024

Going on right now (and, I believe, will be available to watch when it's finished):

Co-hosted by the White House Domestic Policy Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, “Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in o...

29/08/2023

Something I've been thinking about lately (and this may be mostly specific to the United States) is how it is to be a conservative leaning music therapist within a largely liberal leaning profession. Admittedly, I tend to live in the liberal camp, so I used my experience of being a music therapist in a system that, to my mind, was deeply disrespectful of the disabled people it purported to serve, and I tried to get an idea of what it might be like. I often felt alone and, sometimes, mocked for my different perspective, and I spent a lot of time feeling angry.

I'd be curious to know if other music therapists have put any thought into this. I know I've seen posts from clinicians who work with people who have different political beliefs, and that has its own challenges. How does it affect the way a music therapist feels about this profession when many colleagues may be so ideologically different.

25/10/2022

https://musictherapychronicles.com/2022/10/19/188-reflective-practice-melanie-wiseheart-mmt-mt-bc-part-1/

I wanted to post this separately in case people missed Melanie alerting us to this podcast conversation somewhere below. It's worth discussing here too, I think.

In this episode Melanie tells us about her research and standpoint on reflective practice: what it is, positive and negative implications, and why it’s so important.

07/10/2022

Colleagues who do research, you will find this of interest!

Please join us on 18 October for our exciting CPD event !

- 18 October
- 19:30
- R400 (for non Sanata members)

Registration link below:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSePdc2g1vDPy8uFqAPHUcjBvXwL_Y-cgFfOAg3crxQ9KpY-yQ/viewform

❗️ Please note: you will need to read an article before the event. Please register timeously ❗️

30/06/2022

Colleagues and friends, one of my former students, Love Them, shared their thesis with me. It's an arts-based study culminating in a process they developed and called Expressive Music Journaling, very much focused on using music as a self-reflective process. Check it out!
https://soar.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12648/1583/Benson_Thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

22/06/2022

Welcome, all you new folx who've joined us here at the Music Therapy Clinician! We haven't been active for a while, because the four of us who published the Clinician have all had various changes in our life situations. That said, we all remain committed to self-reflection as a part of the music therapy clinical process. Feel free to introduce yourselves and share a bit about what brought you here. 🙂

01/03/2022

A new edition of Voices is out, and there's a great article on reflective practice written by Sekyung Jang. Check it out!
https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/3364/3415

Various forms of reflective practice, including journal writing and self-experiences, have been explored in music therapy. However, there is limited literature on practical methodologies that articulate how to reflect on sessions. The author introduces a practical methodology that guides the process...

01/11/2021

Apparently, it's not just write a novel month in November. It's also Academic Writing month! Here are some resources you may find helpful.
https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/resources/blog/welcome-to-academic-writing-month!-(-acwrimo)

Stay up to date on the latest insights from inside the data analysis software world. Get details on product features and use cases to help your research outcomes.

03/07/2021

I've just discovered a remarkably helpful new podcast meant to help (especially) academic writers. In Episode 1, writing specialist, Stephanie Dunson, addresses the mistake of, ahem, reading too many books about writing. Needless to say, I relate! She suggests reflecting on your writing experience every time you sit down to write - or avoid sitting down to write - so you can get to know your process (we love reflective practice) and start to make changes so you can move forward.

Anyone else spend way more time obsessively learning about writing instead of actually doing it? What are your frustrating writing "mistakes"? Tell us in the comments (so we can all feel a little bit better about ourselves and get on with our writing projects already). https://100writingmistakes.org/http-eepurl-com-hsfc-d/

100 Mistakes Academic Writers Make …and How to Fix Them   Trailer Welcome to 100 Mistakes Academic Writers Make …and How to Fix Them, a podcast for academics and other writers who …

23/05/2021

"Notably absent from our lectures, case conferences and readings? Terrible, no good, very bad therapy. Irreparable empathic failures, sexual transgressions, narcissistic hostage-taking, wounding reservedness that traps clients in unrequited longing, client suicides, damaging advice, damaging refusal to give advice—these topics weren’t on our syllabus. If we were really lucky, we found a friend or two in our training cohort who we could dish the truth with, and if we were really, really lucky, we had a supportive supervisor somewhere along the way who encouraged our self-honesty with their own. Otherwise, it seemed that the collective ego of the therapy profession was a bit too fragile to handle its own dark side."
https://www.psychotherapy.net/article/bad-therapy-1-kory

Psychologist Deb Kory critiques psychotherapy training programs for idealizing "master" therapists and their inadequate attention to "bad therapy."

05/05/2021

It so happens this Saturday, May 8th, is World Collage Day! Collage can be a nifty way to immerse yourself in a reflective practice. Start here for inspiration. Feel free to post photos and/or videos of your collage projects here.
http://www.kolajmagazine.com/worldcollageday/2021/events.html

World Collage Day is an international celebration of collage on Saturday, May 8, 2021.

05/05/2021