Dr. Diane Austin, D.A., LCAT
Vocal Psychotherapist, In Depth Psychotherapist, Lecturer
For more information on training:
austinvocalpsychotherapy@gmail.com
austinvocalpsychotherapyuk@gmail.com
I was always surrounded by music, growing up listening to my father coaching singers. Eventually, I learned all the songs I heard them singing. As I got older, I would go to hear him play piano and often sat in with his Jazz quartet. Before I turned 20 I landed my first professional singing job. After moving to NYC, I began my singing career in cabarets and nightclubs. During that time, I also developed an interest in psychology and began Jungian analysis.
In 1982, I discovered music therapy and was thrilled to find a field that combined my two loves, music (singing) and psychotherapy! Through my studies and experiences at NYU, I came to the conclusion that the voice is our primary instrument and one doesn’t have to be a trained singer to gain the physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits that sounding and singing provide. I graduated with a Master’s Degree in music therapy and continued to explore different schools of psychotherapy. In 1986, I began seeing clients in private practice and within that setting, I developed the first voice-based model of music therapy, Vocal Psychotherapy.
Vocal Psychotherapy is the first voice based model of music therapy and was developed by Doctor Diane Austin, a licensed creative arts therapist. This model integrates the breath, natural sounds, vocal improvisation, songs and dialogue within a client therapist relationship to facilitate intrapsychic and interpersonal change and growth. It combines the ideas and theories of depth psychology with the practice of vocal music therapy. Austin Vocal Psychotherapy includes vocal holding techniques, free associative singing© and other methods that access conscious and unconscious feelings, memories and associations.
Example of Free Associative Singing
In Depth Psychotherapy involves working with unconscious material to identify and work through depression, anxiety, attachment disorders and other forms of trauma that inhibit clients ability to change and grow and become their authentic selves.
Austin Vocal Psychotherapy is very effective in trauma work.
Any experience that causes an infant or child unbearable psychic pain is traumatic, including the more cumulative traumas of unmet dependency needs, inadequate nurturing and interruptions of the attachment bond. Problems in the very beginning of life within the caretaker-infant bond will most likely affect the child throughout their life and can set the stage for vulnerability to other forms of trauma. Primitive defenses like denial and dissociation protect the fragile self from annihilation, but also affect the integrity of the personality. Today, through neuroscience, we can better understand that it is necessary to first access the nonverbal right hemisphere through sounds, movements and images, and then enable it to communicate with the left, in order to gain cognitive and affective mastery.
BIO
Dr. Diane Austin, DA, LCAT (she/her) is the Director of the Music Psychotherapy Center in NYC, NY, where she has maintained a private practice in Vocal Psychotherapy, in-depth psychotherapy, and supervision for more than 40 years. She is an adjunct associate professor at New York University in the graduate music therapy department. Dr. Austin developed the first voice based model of music therapy, Vocal Psychotherapy, and has taught post master’s distance training programs in vocal psychotherapy in Vancouver, B. C., Seoul, Korea, and now has an international distance training program in Austin Vocal Psychotherapy in Brighton, England and NYC. She has given workshops in countries throughout the world and has published numerous articles and book chapters on in depth music therapy and vocal psychotherapy. Her book, “The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of The Self” was published by Jessica Kingsley and codified her model.
VOCAL HOLDING
Vocal holding techniques involve the intentional use of two chords in combination with the therapist’s voice in order to create a consistent and stable musical environment that facilitates improvised singing within the client–therapist relationship. This method provides a reliable, safe structure for the client who is afraid or unused to improvising. In Sandy’s words, ‘As a classically trained singer it used to be hard for me to improvise and to not care about what came out or how it sounded when it came out.’
Vocal holding techniques also support a connection to self and other and can be used to promote a therapeutic regression in which unconscious feelings, sensations, memories and associations can be accessed, processed and integrated. These unconscious experiences are directly related to parts of the self that have been split off and suspended in time due to traumatic occurrences. When contacted and communicated with, these younger parts can be reunited with the ego and the vital energy they contain can be made available to the present day personality. Developmental arrests can be repaired and a more complete sense of self can be attained.
Unlike jazz or other forms of clinical improvisation where shifts in harmonic centers are to be expected, this improvisational structure is usually limited to two chords in order to establish a predictable, secure musical and psychological container that will enable clients to relinquish some of the mind’s control, sink down into their bodies and allow their spontaneous selves to emerge. The simplicity of the music and the hypnotic repetition of the two chords, combined with the rocking rhythmic motion and the singing of single syllables (sounds, not words, initially) can produce a trance-like altered state and easy access to the world of the unconscious. The steady, consistent harmonic underpinning, the rhythmic grounding and the therapist’s singing encourage and support the client’s vocalization. Within this strong yet flexible musical container the client can explore new ways of being, experience the freedom of play and creative self-expression and allow feelings and images to emerge (Austin 1996, 1998, 1999b). The client’s voice, feelings, and emerging aspects of the self are all held within this musical matrix.
This method is especially useful in working through developmental injuries and arrests due to traumatic ruptures in the mother–child relation- ship or empathic failures at crucial developmental junctures (Austin 2001). After vocal holding, Ann said she felt accepted. ‘I didn’t have to do anything amazing, sing louder or better... It was just fun and I liked the way we sang together!’ This was very therapeutic for Ann who grew up with critical, perfectionistic parents who expected her to be the best at everything. This internalized perfectionism led to low self-esteem and fear of judgement which prevented her from succeeding in her musical career.
There are four steps involved in vocal holding but this process is not meant to be a prescription or recipe. For more information see, “The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of the Self.”
FREE ASSOCIATIVE SINGING
‘Free associative singing’ is the term I use to describe a technique that can be implemented when words enter the vocal holding process. It is similar to Freud’s (1938) technique of free association in that clients are encouraged to verbalize whatever comes into their head with the expectation that, by doing so, they will come into contact with unconscious images, memories and asso- ciated feelings. It differs from Freud’s technique in that the client is singing instead of speaking, but more significantly, the therapist is also singing and contributing to the musical stream of consciousness by making active verbal and musical interventions. The accompaniment (two-chord holding pattern or repetitive riff ) and my singing continue to contain the client’s process, but the emphasis now is not only on ‘holding’ the client’s emerging self and psychic contents but on creating momentum through the music and the lyrics that will propel the improvisation and the therapeutic process forward.
In its simplest form, free associative singing involves clients singing a word or phrase and my mirroring or repeating the words and melody back to them. As the improvisation deepens, I make critical decisions about when, how and what to sing with the client. This is especially true when I move beyond simply mirroring the client’s lyrics and music and begin to vocally provide empathic reflection, make gentle interpretations by singing thoughts and feelings clients may be having but are not yet voicing, and use repetition to emphasize important words and help the clients digest the meaning in the words.
Essential to the effectiveness of this method is the use of the ‘double’ (Moreno 1994). The ‘double’ is the inner voice of the client. The therapist sings as the double in the first person using ‘I’. Drawing on induced countertransference, empathy and intuition as well as knowledge of the client’s history, I give voice to feelings and thoughts the client may be experiencing but is not yet singing, perhaps because the feelings and thoughts are uncomfortable, unconscious, or the client has no words for them, or no ability to conceptualize the experience. When the doubling is not accurate it still moves the process along as clients can change the words to fit their truth. When it is accurate, it provides clients with an experience of being truly seen and understood. It also encourages a bond between client and therapist and over time strengthens the client’s sense of self.
For more information about musical changes etc. see “The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy: Songs of the Self.”