1st Edition

Music in Arts-Based Research and Depth Psychology Listening for Shadow as Inclusive Inquiry

By Shara Brun Copyright 2024
    188 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book addresses an existing gap in academic arts-based research, whereby, rather than exploring music as an effective therapeutic intervention, it is explored as the central medium or tool of inquiry.

    Integrating heuristic, hermeneutic, and arts-based grounded theory methodologies, the book conceptualizes and describes the practice of Sonic Stretching as an in-depth example of using sound as an effective and systematic research tool. Stemming from evidence-based insights, the book explores and explains ways in which music and sound can be utilized in arts-based research (ABR) in all disciplines, as opposed to only being used among professional musicians and those operating within music studies. It points to some of the obstacles that have previously prevented this from happening more broadly and, in doing so, aims to help bridge the conspicuous gap in ABR studies, where music and sonic imagination should be.

    Offering a clear and well-presented example for integrating music and sound into processes of depth psychological inquiry and addressing the impact of colonialization upon embodied knowledge in music and academic research, it will appeal to scholars and researchers working at the intersection of psychology, music studies, education, social justice, and research methods.

    Section I: Introduction and Theory  1. Aims of the Book: Making Room for Music and Sound in Inquiry  2. Key Terms and Contexts in Music, Sound, and Inquiry  3. Music and Sound in Inquiry: Current Uses and Obstacles  Section II: Application and Practice: The Sonic Stretching Research  4. Research Approach and Integrative Methodology  5. Heuristic Findings: Compositional Process as MABR Methodology  6. Findings from Listener Feedback: The Sonic Waters of Transformation  7. Conclusions, Ethical Considerations, and Evaluations of Rigor

    Biography

    Shara Brun is a Core Candidate Assistant Professor in the graduate Somatic Counseling program at Naropa University, USA.

    “Brun’s unique lens as musician, researcher and somatic depth psychologist, challenges the notions of western oriented music in inquiry while proposing other ways of knowing through Jungian concepts of sonic archetypes and sonic imagination. Anyone open to discovering what lives in the margins and shadows, including collective, personal or traumatic embodied psychic experience should read this book.” 

    -Mitchell Kossak PhD, LMHC, REAT, Professor Counseling and Expressive Arts Therapy Lesley University, Associate Editor Journal of Applied Arts and Health

    “Brun’s work using music to expose and work with psychological material is profound. As visual art is used to reveal otherwise hidden information, music and sound vibrations can also uncover and help heal challenging and painful human difficulties. This book helps to explain how.”

     -Art Lande, Grammy-Nominated Composer, Arranger, Improvisational Pianist and Drummer, International Music Educator.

    “We need more of the arts in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. Brun offers careful and exciting work that explores how to use music and sound more broadly as an important inroad to working with complex aspects of the human experience.”

    -Dr. Betty Cannon, President of Boulder Psychotherapy Institute, Author of Sartre and Psychoanalysis