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- Title
THE POTENTIAL OF PARADOX: CHAOS AND ORDER AS INTERDEPENDENT RESOURCES WITHIN SHORT-TERM MUSIC THERAPY GROUPS WITH YOUNG OFFENDERS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
- Authors
Oosthuizen, Helen
- Abstract
Whilst many therapists find the chaotic nature of groups with adolescents challenging, this has rarely been explored in the music therapy literature. This research explores my personal experiences of chaos as a potential resource in short-term music therapy groups with young offenders in South Africa. The study utilises crystallisation, combining grounded theory techniques alongside the use of coloured patterns that depict the data to analyse field notes recorded over 10 years of my work in this context. This supports the development of a preliminary theory. Emergent findings suggest that chaotic experiences enable group transformation alongside the order required for group formation. Predictable musical frameworks, shared music preferences and collaborative music-making strengthened groups through offering boundaries, belonging and affirmation. Intense, dissonant music-making and group conflicts instigated chaos that challenged group members to broaden their perspectives, incorporate diversity and formulate new ways of being together. The paradoxical interrelationship between order and chaos urged group members to balance tensions between compliance and resistance, unity and diversity, creation and destruction, bolstering their capacity to recreate their lives within complex contexts. This study necessitates that music therapists reconsider assumptions regarding our engagement with chaos in music therapy groups with young people.
- Subjects
SOUTH Africa; MUSIC therapy; JUVENILE offenders; MUSIC &; literature; YOUTH; ADOLESCENCE
- Publication
Qualitative Inquiries in Music Therapy, 2019, Vol 14, p1
- ISSN
1559-7326
- Publication type
Article