Music Improvisation through a Unique Psychodynamic Lens (3 credits)

with Dr. Rhett-Lawson Mohajer

When you improvise you’re doing more than creating music. You’re listening, responding, connecting, taking risks, making space, and participating in a relationship that unfolds through sound.

This experiential course explores music improvisation through a psychodynamic lens, helping you develop a deeper understanding of what may be happening within the music, within the client, and between client and music therapist.

Using principles of Object Relations Theory and its emphasis on human relationships, you’ll examine how musical improvisation can provide opportunities for expression, connection, exploration, and therapeutic change. You’ll consider how musical choices and interactions may reflect relational patterns and emotional experiences that are not always easily communicated through words.

Through experiential activities, you’ll have opportunities to explore these concepts through music rather than simply learning the theory behind them.

You’ll also examine your own emotional responses to music and consider how culture, identity, experience, and perspective can influence what we hear, feel, and interpret. This multicultural lens encourages greater awareness when making meaning from musical experiences with clients.

Whether improvisation is already an important part of your practice or you want to understand it on a deeper level, this course will help you listen differently to what is happening within and between people when music is created.

In this workshop, you will learn:

How Object Relations Theory can provide a framework for understanding relational experiences within musical improvisation.
How improvisation can support expression, connection, exploration, and therapeutic growth.
Ways to notice and consider relational and emotional processes that emerge through music-making.
How experiential improvisation can deepen your understanding of concepts that may be difficult to understand through theory alone.
How your own emotional responses to music can influence the way you experience and interpret musical interactions.
Why maintaining a multicultural perspective is important when considering the meaning and emotional impact of music.

Learning Objectives:

Describe the psychodynamic changes in response to music
Explain the psychodynamic responses using a psychoanalytic theory
Utilize music improvisation as a potential part of work in dyads
Observe and predict possible implicit multicultural biases
Discuss the sentimental value assigned to musical instruments

Schedule

Lecture One, including in-class activities 26 minutes

Lecture Two 21 minutes

Lecture Three, including two experiential activities 27 minutes

Assignment, evaluation, multicultural considerations, and treatment implementation 90 minutes

CBMT Domain areas:

II.B (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

III.A.11; IV.A.1, Task Statement 44

II.B.5; III Task Statement 33 & 34; III.A.3, 6, 7 & 10); III.A.7,08,09,10)

II.C.1&2; III.A Task Statement 33&34; V.B.2, 3, 5, Task Statement 61)

II.D.2, 4, Task Statement 23; IV.B.2 & 4

Music Improvisation through a Unique Psychodynamic Lens is approved by the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT) for 3 CMTEs-Continuing Music Therapy Education credits. . The Spiegel Academy, CBMT Approved Provider #P-106, maintains responsibility for program quality and adherence to CBMT policies and criteria.

Class Description