Unleashing the potential of chaos: How music therapists and young people can engage chaos as a resource in short-term music therapy groups

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Many music therapists propose that chaos, such as destructiveness and disintegration, could thwart music therapy group processes and should be minimised or resolved. From a paradoxical approach, however, chaos is understood as a transformative complement to ordered, formative music therapy experiences. The research in this paper explored how music therapists and adolescents could engage with chaos as a resource in music therapy groups.

Method

From a paradoxical approach, the music therapist--researcher facilitated two short-term group music therapy processes with nine young South Africans from under-resourced and often violent communities, referred for committing offences. The researcher utilised crystallisation, including constructivist grounded theory, participatory action research, and abduction, to analyse how group members could engage with chaotic group experiences. Findings, constructed through a cyclical process of data collection, analysis, and inclusion of group feedback, are presented in a matrix.

Results

The matrix shows how groups could utilise chaos to explore multiple possibilities for responding to challenges. They expressed themselves courageously and played unconventional group roles through their musicking and participation. They juggled paradoxical tensions between observational and active, integrative and disintegrative, engagement styles. This supported their transformation in the group, and potentially within the chaotic South African context.

Discussion

Music therapists can use the matrix to support adolescents in music therapy groups to engage with chaos as a transformative resource. They can accompany young people through offering holding, resources and collaborative support. When it is safe, music therapists may allow or encourage chaos that empowers adolescents to cope with challenges independently.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• music therapy groups
• paradoxical approach
• chaos
• abduction
• constructivist grounded theory

Acknowledgement

My sincere thanks to Kate Aitchison for her comments on a previous draft of this paper. Many thanks also to Dr Katrina McFerran for supervising the doctoral thesis on which this paper is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Please see Appendix C1 in Oosthuizen (2020, p. 427)

² To protect the confidentiality, anonymity and privacy of clients, I have replaced their names with pseudonyms. I have also excluded personal or contextual information that would enable a reader to identify these young people.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this study.

Notes on contributors

Helen Oosthuizen

Helen Oosthuizen, PhD (University of Melbourne Australia), is a registered UK-based music therapist. She worked as a clinician in South Africa from 2006, with a particular interest in facilitating music therapy groups with young people who had committed offences, on which her PhD research is based. Helen has worked with Music Therapy Master’s Students at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) and Anglia Ruskin University (UK). She has published journal articles and book chapters. Helen was an editor of the book Taking Music Seriously: Narratives From South African Music Therapy, and is an Article Editor for the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy.