Le musicodrame analytique: Entre musique et psychanalyse, une application clinique

Abstract

Analytical Musicodrama is a method of analytical therapy working through artistic mediation. It combines active and receptive music therapy and may be used either for group or individual sessions. It is composed of three phases: the first phase is receptive (listening to music and individual expression through drawing or writing), the second phase is active (musicodramatic improvisation: the musical representation of a form of artistic expression produced during the first phase involving listening to music) and the third phase is receptive again (listening to the recording of the musicodramatic improvisation). Music is an excellent medium for the dramatization of the projective material that we obtain during the first phase of listening, as well as for the expression of feelings. Our aim is to understand the meaning encoded in the improvised musical discourse in order to analyse the unconscious level of the psychic apparatus of our patients, by passing from one codes of figuration-representation to another - the code of music, but also of design and the language of words. The choice of using music, a code far less controlled than speech, facilitates the lifting of resistance defences and access to the unconscious material is obtained far more quickly than with classical word-based therapies. The analysis of transference and countertransference takes place at several stages in the protocol: the choice of music for the listening phase, role attribution to the group members, the choice of instrument used for musical improvisation and, last but not least, exchanges between group members during the musicodramatic improvisation. Additional exploration on the contact with external reality is carried out during the last phase by listening to the recording. Finally, the specific protocol of analytical musicodrama offers the choice of sublimation to participants.