-Heroines’ Journey- Emerging Story by Refugee Women during Group Analytic Music Therapy

Antonietta Mongillo Desideri,Heidi Ahonen

doi:10.15845/voices.v14i1.686

Abstract

There has been some evidence of the benefits of participating in group analytic music therapy with traumatized people. This pilot clinical project investigates the impact of a combination of narrative therapy and group analytic music therapy on refugee/newcomer women in Canada. An ongoing therapy group met for a period of 8 sessions, to share stories and feelings of past experiences and of resettlement. The focus of this group was emotional expression (verbal and musical). Musical listening, improvisation, art, writing, clay-work, and relaxation techniques were used. Several consistent themes re-emerged, including feelings around loneliness, fear guilt, and loss.The analysis of the therapy process showed many commonalities among these women and the process they were going through to deal with their feelings.

Highlights

According to the Project 1 Billion (Mollica, 2011), the last century has been described as the ‘refugee century’
The research task of this clinical study was to observe and describe the narrative group analytic music therapy practice with traumatized refugee/newcomer women and investigate: What are the shared meanings that emerged among the participants during the therapeutic process? If traumatized refugees give meaning to their lives by their self-de ning traumarelated stories, how do they, during musical narrations, re-author stories that include narrative identities of a survivor?
Some will be narrative stories that represent the various aspects of the participant’s emotions/lived experiences and therapeutic process supplemented during group analytic music therapy and musical narrations

Summary

Introduction

According to the Project 1 Billion (Mollica, 2011), the last century has been described as the ‘refugee century’. 46) Ten thousand to 12,000 of these people, representing up to 70 nationalities, are resettled in Canada. More than 1 billion persons in over 47 countries today are affected by mass violence, war, con ict, terrorism, or torture with 100,000 refugees being resettled annually around the world. Many of these refugees have experienced collective trauma (war, etc.) and other traumatic events (torture, rape, etc.) that may impact their adjustment to resettlement efforts. Music therapy has been used to help traumatized people in many of the world’s most troubled locales, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, the Gaza Strip, South Africa, and as a treatment with torture victims in London and Berlin. (Lang & McInerney, 2002; Orth, 2001, 2005; Dokter, 1998; Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004; Jones, Baker, & Day, 2004; Amir, 2004)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion