Exploring reverie : an exploratory inquiry into the instances of reverie and their occurrences within a particular music therapy case study and its improvisational work

Abstract

One of the main concepts within psychoanalysis is that there are three levels of consciousness: the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious.

The aim of this work is to discuss and analyze a process which deals with all three of these states of consciousness on different levels, called “reverie”, as experienced within the music therapy setting.

This thesis initially looks at what has been said so far about reverie, and the goal of this work is to describe the possibility of thinking back retrospectively to moments in music therapy which when experienced can seem hazy and blurry, “dream-like”.

The research will be conducted through a qualitative analysis of data collected during 18 music therapy sessions which were video and audio recorded.

The study will consist in the exploration of reverie within the therapy process; the method employed is Therapeutic Narrative Analysis. The question that ideally will be answered in this study is whether or not experiencing reverie will have had an effective result on the ability of patient and therapist to access their unconscious contents.