A Comparison of First Encounters

Abstract

A music therapist and a medical doctor — both psychoanalytically oriented — compare a first encounter in this clinical project. For the re-staging of relationship experiences, two different spaces for unfolding are thus available. In an analytical first interview, the psychodynamic of the patient as well as the verbal and the averbal setting-in-scene of the therapist-patient relationship becomes understandable. The musical improvisation, with its associations which come up before, during and after playing, makes a second space for development available. Both possibilities of access in relationship and personality diagnosis complement each other in the process of working toward meaning, and, because the music therapist is a female and the doctor a male, the transference activities obtain a further dimension. Reaching the affect of a 64-year old female patient in mourning through music awakens memories, which will make access to her own libidinous and aggressive participation possible again. Old sources of power and strength will become activated. In the analytical first interview, this subject matter sets itself in scene in a complementary and confirming manner — however, with a different quality.