Perspectives on musical competence for people with borderline personality disorder in group music therapy

ABSTRACT

Introduction: This paper explores perspectives on musical competence for seven people with borderline personality disorder participating in an 8-week music therapy program using group improvisation.

Method: This qualitative study used an emergent design, informed by a pragmatic methodological stance, concerned with understanding how music making contributed to therapeutic process in practice. All clinical sessions were video recorded and analysed, beginning with detailed description of music making, followed by transcription of discussion and concluding with interpretation. The participants’ orientation towards musical competencies emerged as the study focus during the analysis.

Results: Analysis revealed changing thoughts and feelings related to musical competence were relevant to the participants’ therapeutic process. Five perspectives on musical competence including “musical structure in improvisation”, “musical language competencies”, “musical interaction competencies”, “knowledge and experience of group improvisation” and “changes in feeling states that accompany group improvisation” describe changes in capacity and intra-psychological processes.

Discussion: Participants’ perceived changes in musical competence appear to have facilitated relational insights and learning from which they derived therapeutic benefits. There are common competencies between musical competence and relational competence yet participants in this study were primarily oriented towards musical competence. As participants’ musical competencies expanded, emotionality decreased, and a healthier self-concept emerged.

KEYWORDS:

• Music therapy
• group therapy
• improvisation
• borderline personality disorder
• relational competencies
• musical competencies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) originally developed by Linehan (1993) is a treatment for BPD that focuses on teaching relational skills, including emotion regulation.

² Music therapy literature describing work with BPD in languages other than English were not reviewed for this study.

³ The personal pronoun is used in this article in an attempt to communicate the positionality of the primary researcher and writer in this study. This paper includes three authors to acknowledge (Felicity A. Baker and Sally Treloyn) for invaluable supervision, advice and editing throughout the research and writing process. The clinical work, research analysis and writing of this article was undertaken by Jason Kenner.

⁴ The term “positioning” was used in this study to describe how one positions their sound within the group sound, including one’s dynamic compared to the group dynamic, and other musical features related to rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and textural synchronisation. It is similar to some of Bruscia’s IAPs profiles (1987) such as salience, autonomy and integration; yet, differs as it relates to how one situates their presence within the group. Positioning was described as indistinct-distinct.

⁵ Pseudonyms are used for all participants in this paper.

⁶ Flow is a term coined by Csikszentmihalyi (1997) to describe the experience of being fully immersed in an activity.

⁷ The clients’ “self-concept” refers to a person’s concept or idea of herself/himself, including self-evaluation and comparison with the ideal self and others (Baumeister, 1999; Pervin & John, 1999).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason Kenner

Jason Kenner is a PhD candidate and Registered Music Therapist (RMT). Jason has worked in a variety of settings including public and private hospitals, community mental health clinics and not for profit programs. He has developed music therapy programs in public hospital and community settings, helping patients cope with hospital admission and building communities of musicians allowing for continued engagement as individuals move through various levels of care in mental health systems. Jason has also lectured in music therapy at University of Melbourne.

Felicity A. Baker

Felicity A. Baker is head of music therapy, and Director, International Research Partnerships for the Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit. She is former Australia Research Council Future Fellow (2011–2015) in the area of music therapy and during this fellowship built models of song writing as practiced through the lenses of different orientations. Felicity has attracted more than $8 million in competitive research funding including three National Health and Medical Research Council grants, (NHMRC), an Australia Research Council Future Fellowship and Australia Research Council Discovery Grant (ARC).

Sally Treloyn

Sally Treloyn is an Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Intercultural Research and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Treloyn’s specialism is the public song traditions of the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia and her research focuses on issues of music endangerment, resilience and sustainability, repatriation as strategy for revitalisation, collaboration and ethics.