Case Studies 

"From Uprooting to Replanting: on Post-trauma Group Music Therapy for Pre-school Children" by Rivka Felsenstein

     This article is about music therapy with pre-school children that were evicted from their homes' and sent to live in temporary housing. The families and children were provided with music therapy services through the government because they forced the home evacuations. The familes and children were showing signs of posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of these evacuations.  Structure was very important for the sessions because of all the recent chaos in clients' lives.  Throughout the sessions the children became more comfortable with each other and were able to express their emotions through music. Once the sessions came to a close the children were able to, "relate to their homes in a more postive way and not simply as the stage on which the forced evacuation was played out" [2]. If it were not for the music therapy the children would have a lot more trouble adjusting once they moved to their new homes, and they may have never been able to think of where they came from positively again. 

 

"Giving Trauma a Voice; The Role of Improvisational Music Therapy in Exposing, Dealing with and Healing a Traumatic Experience of Sexual Abuse"by Dorit Amir

     This article focuses on the use of improvisational music therapy for clients that have experienced sexual abuse during their childhood. This case study featured a 32-year-old woman, Lisy, who came to music therapy in order to receive help with making meaningful connections with others, with her inability to acheive life goals, and be satisfied, her health problems, and concentration problems. During the first several sessions Lisy played piano with little emotions, and always tried to stay in control. Once Lisy began to trust the music therapist more she started to release some control, and started playing improvisations. Through these improvisations Lisy uncovered that as a child her father sexually abused her. On her very last session, she played piano with, " flow, more energy and [more] emotion" [3] If it were not for the music therapy, Lisy would have spet the rest of her life not living to fullest, and always being afraid but not knowing why. 

     

  

Sources

[1] Clement-Cortes (15)

Clements-Cortés, Amy. "Music to Shatter the Silence: A Case Study on Music Therapy, Trauma, and the Holocaust/La Musique Pour Briser Le Silence : Une Étude De Cas Sur La Musicothérapie, Les Traumatismes, Et l'Holocauste." Canadian Journal of Music Therapy 14.1 (2008): 9-21. ProQuest. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

[2] Felsenstein (83)

Felsenstein, Rivka. "From Uprooting To Replanting: On Post-Trauma Group Music Therapy For Pre-School Children." Nordic Journal Of Music Therapy 22.1 (2013): 69-85. Music Index. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

[3] Amir (106) 

Amir, Dorit. "Giving Trauma a Voice: The Role of Improvisational Music Therapy in Exposing, Dealing with and Healing a Traumatic Experience of Sexual Abuse." Music Therapy