The POWER of Music as Therapy - "Musicogenic Eutherapeia" - Part 5
by Dr. Arthur W. Harvey, B.S., M.M., D.M.A.
Music therapy provides avenues for communication that can be useful to those who find it difficult to express themselves in words. Music's unique power is evident in all ages, all cultures, and states of health. It is common knowledge that music touches the emotions. Aldous Huxley stated that "after silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence (27), establishes the importance of emotion in everyday life and states that music is relevant to successful living. He believes that people need the education and development of the emotive limbic system that music stimulates; that being in touch with our own emotions, and those of others, leads to success; and that the more successful a person becomes, the less cognition matters, and the more emotional skills become critical. Music serves as a window to emotions. According to Kohut (28), music serves "…as an extra…meta…verbal mode of mental functioning, permits a specific, subtle regression to pre-verbal, i.e., to truly primitive forms of mental experience." This regression appears to occur regardless of human differences, age, gender, culture, or education. Music produces arousal of emotions and feeling states.
Aesthetician Susanne K. Langer (29) provides a strong rationale in her writings for the role of the arts in providing an education in feelings ... and emotions. Music objectifies feelings and emotions that are ineffable, and an education in the arts educates receptivity and expressivity for emotional intelligence and subsequent emotional literacy. Music lets us get in touch with our feelings, our intuition, and our hopes and fears. Eduard Hanslick (30), music critic and aesthetician, provided a description of the ineffable character of music as expressing and conveying emotions by two processes: (1) the symbolism of the sounds, and (2) the analogy of motion.
The recent explosion of neuroscience research caused a marked increase in approaches to understanding human emotions, from theoretical, philosophical and psychological perspectives to neurophysiological, medical and therapeutic. Music therapist and researcher Mark Rider (31) suggested that techniques which stimulate a dynamic balance of all emotions will also promote healing precesses. He has found that depression and chronic stress are characterized by imbalances of emotionality, neurotransmitters and electrical brain wave activity. In contrast to other researchers, Rider believes that there are really only four basic feeling states, "Bad (fear), Mad, Sad, and Glad", and a vehicle for working through them is music. He states that ". . . the consequences of repressing these emotion as opposed to expressing them can be disastrous".
Recent interest in the applications for music in medicine, has produced research that helps clarify the processes involved in music as a stimulus for emotional development. The neuroaudiological pathways allow music to have an effect upon the hypothalamus and limbic system, structures in the brain most responsible for emotional behavior in humans. Through music, emotional states can be affected, influenced, experienced and modified.
According to Carlson (32) the biomedical basis for positive emotional effects of music is that "Endogenous opiods have been shown to play a role in reinforcement" of emotional development, and that they, the endorphins, have been shown to be activated by music. The pioneering researcher, Candace B. Pert provides a detailed neurochemical explanation for why we feel the way we feel, in her book Molecules of Emotion (33). The neurochemical, dopamine, has been shown in studies to also be involved in reinforcement of emotions.
Although musically activated brain changes appear to affect a wide range of neurological structures, the overt behaviors, autonomic responses, and hormonal secretions that comprise emotion are controlled by separate systems. The amygdala appears to be the integrating mechanism for controlling these responses, according to Carlson (32). Taylor (34) describes the amygdal as ..... a limbic system structure located in the temporal lobe and is responsible for behavioral reactions to objects or stimuli that are perceived to be of special biological significance. It serves as, the focal point between sensory systems, such as the auditory reception system for music, and effector systems that are responsible for the three components of emotion: behavioral, autonomic, and hormonal."
English psychiatrist, Anthony Storr (35) makes a distinction similar to Langer between feelings and emotions, and writes that ..."The patterns of mathematics and the patterns of music both engage our feelings, but only music affects our emotions. Herein lies the difference in our response to each. Emotions involve the body; feelings do not. Music promotes order within ourselves in a way which mathematics cannot because of music's physical affects... Music is less abstract than mathematics because it causes physiological arousal and because the sounds from which it probably originated are emotional communications. It is both intellectual and emotional, restoring links between mind and body."
A revolution in understanding how we experience and communicate emotions was begun by Manfred Clynes (36), linking the movement of music with emotion through the body. Clynes shows in his development of "sentic theory" the exact connection between the physiology of emotional experience and its precise musical counterparts in musical gesture. Since emotions do have a biological and neurological basis, and music offers a significant vehicle for expressing, symbolizing, and educating emotions, Clynes asserts there ought to be some evidence of specific neurochemical changes as a result of musical experiences. Important recent research interest focuses on the health benefits of music, demonstrating that emotional experiences evoked by music produce empirical evidence of the need for music as a means of developing emotional intelligence in individuals of all ages.
In 2001 our second child, a 39 year old daughter, Laurie died. She, as a young lady developed mental illness and later a progressive physical disability as well. During the last 15 years of her life she listened to music constantly - day and night and watched music videos …When she was not watching videos, she was listening to music on CDs, radio and tapes. Music was as important for her as the oxygen and many medications she required in the later years of her life. In a tribute article I wrote for Laurie titled Music Marks Memorable Moments of Meaning, I described music as her "feeling food", as well as an escape stimulus, reality checker, sleep inducer, faith feeder, memory recaller, thought manager.. .and much more.
At an International Society of Music in Medicine Symposium (37) in California in the early 1990's, I was privileged to hear the preliminary report of a research project involving Parkinsonian patients using the rhythmic beat of music as a vehicle for facilitating more fluid walking. A documentary from that research, headed up by Dr. Michael H. Thaut, on Auditory Rhythmic Facilitation shows the POWERful effect that the beat of music has on individuals, utilizing rhythmic cuing as a stimulus for increased mobility. Over the past several decades it has been my privilege to be part of many conferences, workshops and symposiums on Sound Therapy and Music Therapy.
Because music, in all its creative permutations of SOUNDs: rhythms, pitches, timbres, dynamics, textures, organization (form) and styles, provides such a universally strong stimuli affecting individuals from all cultures, at all ages, in all mental states, it has been the purpose of this chapter to explore some of the complex human responses to music. Music serves many purposes, but in more than forty-eight years as a musician, educator and researcher, I know of no more important application to illustrate music's POWER, than it's therapeutic role. I am honored to have been part of a pioneering partnership that is developing between music as therapy and medicine, and the growing recognition that music can indeed make a positive contribution to our health, as music produces responses in our brains, which in turn affects our body systems' responses, illustrating the POWER Of Music to establish Music-Brain-Body-Health Connections.
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Part 1: The POWER of Music as Therapy
Part 2: Physiological Effects of Music
Part 3: Oncology Applications of Music
Part 4: Wellness Benefits of Music
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