Enactivist music therapy: Toward theoretical innovation and integration

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Music therapy research has traditionally been somewhat fragmented into different research traditions. This paper argues that the burgeoning field of enactivism could provide important theoretical integration to music therapy research and practice. Stressing the interdependence of mind, brain, body, and environment, enactivism has provided theoretical integration in several fields, not least music cognition and psychiatry. This paper is the first focused theoretical contribution that applies relevant enactivist theory to music therapy.

Methods

After a reflection on theoretical developments in music therapy, we provide a general introduction to enactivism and its multiple origins in human and biological sciences and present its existing contributions to understanding mental illness and musicking. We also make a specific contribution, through discussion of an example of free music improvisation.

Results

Providing an enactive analysis of the sense of agency in this practice, we argue that music improvisation, especially in therapy, might work particularly well for people with severe mental illness because improvisation strengthens and flexes the disturbed sense of agency that often characterizes such mental health challenges.

Discussion

Finally, we discuss strengths and weaknesses of the proposed framework and suggest future potential studies to better evaluate the potential contribution of enactivism to the research and practice of music therapy.

KEYWORDS:

• Music therapy
• enactivism
• improvisation
• mental illness
• agency

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the “Movement, Culture, and Society” research group at the Department of Sports Science and Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark; the editors of Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, Grace Thompson and Imogen Clark; and two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments that helped to clarify our arguments. For the writing of this article, SH was supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 262762, and together SH and TS were supported by the Arts councils of Denmark and Norway project number 19/2127-3.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ In some countries the term “psychiatry” is replaced by broader interdisciplinary terms such as “mental health care.” Each term is debated and has its own problematic history of use. We use the term “psychiatry” in a broad and interdisciplinary way. This is how the term is used in the research domain of the first author of this article.

² Terms such as “disorder” and “illness” are sometimes read as being linked to the biomedical model. In line with the phenomenological tradition of thought, we use the terms in a broader sense which highlights a person’s experience of being ill.

³ Enactivism is often rubricked as one of four “E”s: Embodied, Extended, Embedded, and Enacted. For an overview of 4E cognition, see Newen et al. (2018). There are several discussions about whether all 4 “E”s are compatible (Maiese, 2018) and about different versions of enactivism (De Jesus, 2016; DiPaolo & Thompson, 2014). These detailed discussions are not particularly important for music therapy. Our account of enactivism relies primarily on Di Paolo’s, Thompson’s and Gallagher’s work.

⁴ Many music therapists will recognize this position from Small’s seminal work Musicking (1998). Indeed, that very work is also fundamental to enactive thinking on musical practices.

⁵ That de Haan’s work on psychiatric disorders is much wider than the focus on ipseity should not be taken to mean that phenomenological psychiatry has a solipsistic focus or disregards the intersubjective dimensions of psychopathology. See for instance Henriksen and Nilsson (2017), and Sass et al. (2017).

⁶ See for instance De Jaegher’s (2018) discussion of intersubjectivity and Maiese’s (2018) discussion of the treatment of depression.

Additional information

Funding

This study received funding from the Arts Council Norway [19/2127-3] and the Research Council of Norway [262762].

Notes on contributors

Simon Høffding

Simon Høffding is associate professor at the Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics at the University of Southern Denmark. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Subjectivity Research, Copenhagen and has since held positions at the Interactive Minds Centre, Aarhus, the Department of Psychology, Copenhagen and the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, Oslo. His interests span phenomenology, 4E cognition, musical absorption, expertise studies, shared minds, and improvisation. He works through interdisciplinary methodologies combining phenomenological analyses, ethnographic fieldwork, and physiological experiments. This work is published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Topoi, Synthese, Mind & Language, and Musicae Scientiae and in his monograph, A Phenomenology of Musical Absorption.

Torben Snekkestad

Torben Snekkestad (b.1973) is a Norwegian saxophonist, composer, improvisational musician and researcher who explores a rich palette of musical genres and aesthetic expressions. From free improvisation to electroacoustic music, from jazz to classical solo and chamber music, his unique musical signature is shaped by a melting pot of diverse musical influences, with extended saxophone techniques playing a distinctive role. Snekkestad has shared both stage and studio with a substantial list of internationally esteemed artists. He has toured around the world and shares his expertise as an educator at reputable music education institutions. With an extensive discography spanning from solo works to numerous collaborations with various ensembles, Torben Snekkestad has established himself as a significant voice in today’s experimental music scene. He is currently professor of contemporary music performance at Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo and holds a Ph.D. in artistic research from Norwegian Artistic Research Programme.

Brynjulf Stige

Brynjulf Stige, PhD, is Professor of Music Therapy at The Grieg Academy, University of Bergen (UiB), Norway. After work with community-oriented projects since 1983, he co-founded the second music therapy education program in Norway in 1988. He was the founding editor of Nordic Journal of Music Therapy from 1992 to 2006 and founding co-editor of Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy from 2001 to 2020. Stige was the founding leader of GAMUT – The Grieg Academy Music Therapy Research Center, UiB/NORCE from 2006 to 2019 and the co-founding leader of The Grieg Research School in Interdisciplinary Music Studies from 2010 to 2012. Since 2015 he is the founding leader of Polyfon Knowledge Cluster for Music Therapy, a university-community collaboration that explores knowledge-informed and user-involved ways of developing the discipline and practice of music therapy in Norway. He has published extensively on topics such as culture-centered music therapy, community music therapy, and music therapy theory.