Music, Music Therapy and Trauma: International Perspectives

Music, Music Therapy and Trauma: International Perspectives Julie Sutton, Editor (2002). Jessica Kingsley Publishers, wwwjkp.com ISBN: 1-8843100-27-4.Reviewer: Lillian Eyre, MM, MTA (McGill University Hospital Centre).Although today, music therapists may work with clients divergent populations who exhibit cluster symptoms resulting trauma, the application of music therapy in the treatment of trauma has not been specifically or consistently articulated in the music therapy literature. When a conference in Belfast in 2000 brought together music therapists who were working with people affected by traumatic events, Julie Sutton seized the opportunity to make these presentations available to a larger audience. The appearance in 2002 of Sutton's edited book of these conference proceedings, Music, Music Therapy and Trauma: International Perspectives, was a timely and welcome publication of music therapy trauma-related literature.Divided into four main sections or the book consists of an introduction, short biographies of contributors, 12 chapters, an afterword, and separate subject and author indexes. Part I, Trauma perspectives, presents two chapters. The first, by Sutton, sets the context for the following chapters by presenting general DSM criteria for chronic PTSD and Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), and then providing a perspective for thinking about trauma. Sutton points out the difficulties in defining trauma and offers a perspective for thinking about it by referring to psychodynamic and object relations attachment theories as well as to Damasio's neurological theories of primary thinking (fight or flight) and secondary thinking (learned patterns of behaviour) that are implicated during trauma. The chapter concludes with a clinical example of the author's work and a discussion of the impact of trauma work on the therapist and others who come into close contact with survivors of trauma.Chapter 2, the neurology of trauma, is by Michael Swallow. As a neurologist and a musician with knowledge of music therapy, Swallow is well situated to present research on the effects of trauma and its associated emotions on brain responses, and the use of music in trauma-related difficulties. The author cites recent neurological research on the relationship between music and movement revealed in studies on Parkinsons Disease (PD), and explores music and communication the perspective of music processing functions in the brain. In reference to the biological basis of the brain's response to trauma, various theories about the limbic system and the anatomical basis of emotions are briefly referred to, as well as possible effects of emotion on the brain and on memory during trauma. In the last few pages of the chapter, the author attempts to examine music and music therapy within the context of the neurology of trauma. Swallow states, from a physical point of view we have difficulty in explaining just how music works as a therapeutic agent (p. 51). Certainly, this is true, yet it is this reviewer's belief that the author could have made some connections between neurological functions, music, and trauma, as he did at the beginning of the chapter with PD. It is also surprising that Swallow did not include references to recent literature on trauma. Perhaps a work such as Peter Levine's and Ann Frederick's Waking the tiger: Healing trauma: The innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences (1997), which examines the role of the nervous system in storing and healing the traumatic event, would have contributed to an understanding of neurological processes in the context of the relationship of music to emotion and instinct, body and brain (see also van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996).Part II, also two chapters, is entitled Cultural, society and music perspectives. In Chapter 3, Mary Smyth presents the results of a survey on the impact of living under the traumatic conditions of ongoing conflict on persons in Northern Ireland. …

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