Change of Therapist, Change of Therapy?
Looking for a Place and Some Space in a Replacement.

Author:

Anke Coomans

Abstract:
When you enter into a replacement of a musictherapist, it means more then just ‘taking over the tasks’ of the therapist that you are replacing. This lecture concerns the dynamics in a therapeutic process that are caused by such a replacement. These dynamics are not additional to the ongoing process, they ARE the process, they ARE the therapy.
The study of this brought up an awareness of some concordance between my own search for a therapeutical identity and the process that many clients go through when they start a musictherapeutic treatment: the process of learning how ‘to play’, of finding ‘one’s own play’.
What is the role of the music in the light of this? Does the music function as a third, as a constant, or is she also changed by the different situation, when we talk about a replacement?
Within the musictherapy, the music can be an elastic skin that acknowledges and spans at the same time the crumbling that originates from the splitting dynamics.
The music acts as a container and enables the therapeutical work.
 

Keywords:
Replacement-therapeutic relationship-splitting-play

Biographical details:
Anke Coomans graduated as a Master Musictherapist in 2002 at the ‘Hogeschool voor Wetenschap & Kunst, campus Lemmensinstituut’ in Leuven, Belgium. Since 2002 she works at the Psychiatric Hospital Broeders Alexianen in Tienen, with adolescents and adults with substance abuse, with psychotic and depressive patients and with patients in rehabilitation. Beyond her clinical work she is assistant-teacher at the Musictherapy course at the Lemmensinstitute in Leuven. She is also the responsible editor of the newsletter of the BMTvzw (Association of Professional Music Therapists)