Ep 24 Joy Gravestock

Joy is a self-employed music therapist in private practice. Prior
to her music therapy training, she was clinical lead for a
Nottinghamshire NHS Trust, (in adoption services, CAMHS,
Nottinghamshire), having worked previously within the field of
adoption for many years. She was also a member of both Nottingham
and Leicester County’s Adoption Panels, offering both her
professional and personal experiences to panel. Now as a
specialist music therapist in adoption practice, Joy is an
identified lead therapist for Adoption Services in the East
Midlands, as well as retaining links with “CORAM” Leicestershire,
and working extensively with individually referred cases funded
by the Adoption Support Fund (which came into being in 2015 to
enable adoptive families to gain access to psychotherapies). Joy
works with adoptive families where longer-term placements are
deemed “at risk of breakdown”, when ostensibly difficulties
result from the placement of older children who are described as
having significant “attachment (and other) disorders”. She also
works with families at the beginning of new placements when it is
thought likely that traumatic material will impinge upon the
adoption placement.


She is currently working with adopted children with complex
physical and learning disability, where often a disability
discovered at birth led to the relinquishment of a baby. Joy
developed her interest in how the impact of findings from
neurobiology impacted on adult verbal psychotherapy, and what
this might mean for music therapists trying to give meaning to
what is emergent in the therapy room.


Her PhD research explores how relational attachments may be
enhanced by moments of attunement  (which might be explained
partially in terms of their neurobiology) occurring within a
music therapy relationship. She has written the BAMT literature
on adoption which is available to anyone perusing the website
with a request about music therapy in adoption. She has presented
her work on music therapy, adoption, and the significance of
attunement at numerous conferences over the past 5 years, and in
2017 presented at the World Congress Of Music Therapy in Japan
and at “EcArte” (the Eurpoean Arts Therapies conference) in
Poland. She also regularly presents work to adoption agencies,
and consults to groups and service users within the adoption
community. She is an author, supervisor, and lecturer at Derby
and Nottingham Universities.


Luke talks to Joy about her work with adoption and how this
relates to her own life experiences, her development as a music
therapist, and her current PhD research.


References.


Bettelheim. B. 1950. Love Is Not Enough. Collier Books Edition
Eighth Printing 1969.


Fonagy. P. 2001. Attachment Theory And Psychoanalysis. Karnac.


Verrier.N 1993. The Primal Wound: Understanding The Adopted
Child. Gateway Press.


On Music And Psychoanalysis etc.


Ammaniti. M. and Gallese. V. (eds) 2014. The Birth Of
Intersubjectivity: Psychodynamics, Neurobiology and The Self.
Norton.


Rose. G. J. 2004. Between Couch And Piano: Psychoanalysis, Music,
Art and Neuroscience. Routledge.


Searle. Y. and Streng. I. 2001. Where Analysis Meets The Arts:
The Intergration Of The Arts Therapies With Psychoanalytic
Theory. Karnac.


On Relationality.


Jaenicke. C. 2008. The Risk Of Relatedness: Intersubjectivity
Theory In Clinical Practice. Aronson.


Trondalen. G. 2016. Relational Music Therapy: An Intersubjective
Perspective. Barcelona Publishers.


Mitchell. S. A. 2000. Relationality: From Attachment To
Intersubjectivity. Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis.


..and research..


Finlay. L and Evans. K. (eds) 2009. Relational-centred Research
For Psychotherapists: Exploring Meanings and Experience.
Wiley-Blackwell.


On Winnicottian Presence.


Wilberg. P. 2013. Being and Listening: Counselling,
Psychoanalysis and The Ontology Of Listening. New Yoga
Publications.


On Attachment.


Gerhardt. S. 2004. Why Love Matters. Routledge.


Music. G. 2019. Nurturing Children: From Trauma To Growth Using
Attachment Theory, Psychoanalysis and Neurobiology. Routledge.


On Wounded Healers.


Kuchuck. S. 2014. Clinical Implications Of The Psychoanalysts
Life Experience. Routledge.


This has the chapter referred to in the podcast about an
adoptee who describes her lived experience as a therapist with
lived experience of adoption.



Rippere. V. and Williams. R. 1985. Wounded Healers: Mental Health
Workers Experiences Of Depression. Wiley.


Sedgwick. D. 1994. The Wounded Healer: Countertransference From A
Jungian Perspective. Routledge.


…and research…


Romanyshyn. R. 2013. The Wounded researcher: Research With Soul
In Mind. Spring Journal


On Micro Moments Of Attunement (or similar!).


Webber. A. 2017. Breakthrough Moments In Arts-Based
Psychotherapy. Karnac.


On The Idea Of The Third.


Ogden. T. 1989. The Primitive Edge Of Experience. Aronson.


Benjamin. J. 2018. Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory,
Intersubjectivity, and the Third. Routledge.