Introduction

Music as a Healing Power

The healing power of music extends in an affective line throughout the past. Although opinions and concepts on what illnesses are and the attitude towards healing have different throughout the centuries, nothing has changed concerning the human responses and reactions to musical experiences. Applied according to the beliefs of an epoch's cultural customs, music has been used to develop and heal in all areas of magic, religion, and rational though. A willingness of the patient to submit to treatment and a response to that treatment is woven together with the personality of a healer, be it a priest, physician, or a music specialist, to form a significant healer-patient relationship. This bond extends beyond rational thought and roots itself within the emotions to form a connection that seems to hold a sort of power over the illness.

In the present day cognitive-focused world, Music Therapy, a treatment that uses elements of music to help the patient learn new ways of responding to sensory input, is used as a language to encourage the development of a patient's social and emotional interaction, their cognitive learning skills, and also to improve the perceptual-motor areas. Like any other language, music is used as a communication tool, but it holds a unique power that strokes both the reason and emotion of the listener, opening doors that have long been shut to the world, or ones that have never before been opened, allowing the patient to better understand and connect with reality.

Music therapy is especially affective among those with autism, who by nature of the diagnosis have difficultly, if not impossibility, connecting with the world. Autism appears in childhood and extends throughout the rest of a person's life. It is a developmental disorder where delays in a developmental area have extended to impact other areas; therefore, there is no one kind of autism. Being a spectrum disorder, symptoms can differ depending on certain personalities and ages and those diagnosed demonstrates a variety of unique attributes. These attributes can be seen within the genius savant or the high functioning scientists, authors and artists, but they also extend to individuals with severe retardation who have minimal functional abilities and are sometimes completely non-verbal.

One diagnosed with autism has a tendency to live within what appears to be an “unreal” world that he has built around himself while distant from reality. To express this world, he invents ritualistic and symbolic movements and signals that to onlookers are impossible to understand. The way in which sensory information is interpreted by the brain is responsible for how the individual understands himself and how he relates to other people, objects, and situations. Often, in cases of autism, the diagnosed interprets no need for connectedness to the “other” as the ability to perceive and understand concepts of “self” and “other” are limited or close to nonexistent.

Within this autistic sense of “aloneness” there are many sensory misinterpretations: voice and touch can evoke fear, there is no tangible sense of self, and information is fragmented by interpretation of visual and audible perceptions. We attribute this quality of being “alone” to someone with autism, yet to the diagnosed, the term conveys no meaning. Without a sense of being alone, there is no wish to connect to the “other”, and hence, a disconnected abstract world is formed.

The barrier into this false world cannot be penetrated with verbal language and reasoning. It is an emotional barrier that must be breeched by other means. Music is connected with emotions, taking root in the right hemisphere of the brain. When one diagnosed with autism is conscious of sounds heard and produced, musical, auditory, and perceptual awareness is gained. He can produce these things on a concrete instrument to connect himself with a world of reality. These musical sounds are to the diagnosed a non-verbal means of communication that, when given time, can be molded into a means of self expression. Music brings the abstract and the concrete together, reaching the symbols, movements, obsessions, and phobias that are formed in the patient's made-up world.

Methods of music therapy involve repeated exercises of auditory-visual coordination. For example, playing wind instruments assist in expanding the patient's vocalization and word formation. Another method would be “Fill in Songs”, or “Drum-Speak”, which is beating word rhythms while speaking, and “Sound Stories”.

Transcription

For a first hand source on the subject of Music Therapy and what exactly it entails, I interviewed a friend of mine, Will Phillips, who is a senior with a Music Therapy major at William Carrey University in Mississippi . He has participated in a number of Music Therapy internships and projects that focus specifically on children diagnosed with autism. Me: What's it like working with children and adults who have been diagnosed with autism? Do you have an example? Will: Working with both children and adults who have autism is different with each person. In this case, when I first began working with this particular boy, it was too much all at once for him to take in. He became upset, over stimulated, and overwhelmed. A music therapist must learn how to adapt.

Me: Could you expand on that a bit? Will: When working at the Children's Center for Communication and Development (CCCD), I had the opportunity to interact with a 5 year old boy who had autism. We played games and sang songs together once a week for one hour.

Me: Did it take long to connect with him at the beginning, and how did he respond? Did he improve? Will: When the sessions first began, he refused to participate and covered his ears each time I began to play the guitar. The second week, I used an auto harp which was much softer than the guitar and he did not cover his ears. That entire session, we played each song soft, and played games that required whispering. He responded immediately by participating in the instrument playing, and listening and following instructions with the group. Each session following that showed more improvement and more involvement. Instead of covering his ears when someone picked up an instrument, he would clap. Instead of refusing to listen to the other teachers or participate with the class, he remained engaged in the group as observed by following instructions and playing the drum.

Analysis

Each patient with autism, based on personality and certain aspects of the diagnosis, requires a different approach. But in all cases, through music, the patient can be coaxed to let down barriers that before held back new ways of instinct and cognitive learning. These barriers cannot be crossed and behavior cannot be changed with either logical or psychological lessons. The patient cannot be convinced to feel better and unafraid through reasoning when they do not quite understand what they are feeling and why they are behaving the way they do. Music Therapy plays a role in helping the patient to comfortably control his or her environment.

Humans are creatures of emotion with an instinctive sense of fear that cannot be reasoned away. Music pacifies and extends patterns of information along with a more perpetual calm, as almost everyone responds positively to some type of music. Those diagnosed with autism are especially sensitive to music, and Music Therapy is affective as a nonverbal and non-threatening medium. It especially helps in the development and remediation of speech, which for the diagnosed is impersonal and often non-existent.

However, Music Therapy is not intended to be a cure, as there is no known cure to autism. It is a fun and engaging clinical treatment that works to alter circumstances for the better. It is an adaptation, which means it causes the patient to adjust to another alternative, while a cure is a remedy. Many aspects of autism's physiologic discomforts can be controlled and sometimes permanently altered through Music Therapy. For example, the patient can develop more functionally adaptive behaviors and relate better to society and environmental conditions. Changes take place when the individual is introduced to Music Therapy, but unfortunately, regression is inevitable if therapy is removed too quickly or permanently discontinued. To receive the best of benefits, a patient diagnosed with autism ought to be introduced to life-long Music Therapy.

Sources:

Alvin, Juliette. Music Therapy. New York : Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1975.

Berger, Dorita S. Music Therapy, Sensory Integration in the Autistic Child. London , England : Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2002.

Staum, Myra J. "Music Therapy and Language for the Autistic Child." Center for the Study of Autism. 25 Nov. 2006 <http://www.autism.org/music.html>.

About the Author

My name is Corinne Porowski and I was born in Arizona and then moved to Oregon . My family moved from there to Cary , North Carolina , and then to Raleigh , where we've been the past 10 years. As an English major, I love reading and anything involving writing, specifically Creative Writing.

I also love languages and have developed a love for language history: how it evolved into today's languages and dialects, and also how it is developed within the individual.

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