Attending Participatory Orchestral Session for the Training of Psychotherapists. A Case Study

In the context of experiential education, creative and artistic activities are widely recognized as valuable learning resources. In the musicological field, a great interest has recently arisen for the impact that making music together has on personal human skills like empathy and group dynamics. The aim of this research has been thus to involve a group of psychotherapists in a participative orchestral session and to describe the experience they lived and the results of the training. To fulfill this purpose 18 psychologists that were finishing their training as psychotherapists attended a one-day participatory orchestral experience. To describe this case study, data were collected through semi- structured interviews to 7 participants, 2 professional musicians who joined the session and the conductor. Participants described their experience with terms of astonishment, energy and beauty. They reflected about themselves, noticing different attitudes and unexpected traits, and about their work, telling the immediacy of perception of the relational dynamics in the orchestra and about the potentialities of music to work with people. Then they observed group dynamics, personal results and potentialities of music, confirming both the expectations with which the conductor had suggested the experience and the theoretical background.