It’s around 15 years that I’m dedicating my attention to the metaphoric description of what occurs in psychotherapy, in particular through the semantics of affections in music. Due to this I probed into the personalities of some composers and musicians (Giacomo Puccini, Gioachino Rossini, Johann Sebastian Bach, Arturo Toscanini) making comparisons and tracking differences in the processes of creativity as they manifest themeselves in the artistic performance, in psychotherapy, in strategies of survival and change of people with relevant personal and social drawback.

I’ve been strongly encouraged to follow this line by Gianfranco Cecchin, who also honoured me with the foreword of my first book “O divina bellezza... o meraviglia” (O divine beauty... o marvel) inspired by G. Puccini’s Turandot.

The interest into creativity is fed by the passion for music (as amateur I play violin in orchestra, and hold collaboration with the State School of Music – Conservatorio - in Cuneo).

In these last years I’ve been leading workshops on the topic here and there in Italy. Lately I’ve put it in a more steady framework which I’ve called

“a creative approach to psychotherapy”.

First of all, creativity is a process which needs obstacles to start, and it is a way of looking at them. A not persecutory attitude in considering obstacles. The, the systemics aspects of creativity are considered.

The workshop features casework, the presentation of epistemological premises and theorical assumptions (with the connections and the differences with the so-called “Milan Approach”), the comparison amongst three different types of metaphors to describe the therapeutic process. The lenght of the workshop can vary following experiences and needs of participants.

Music is a very strange language. Thomas Mann, in “The Enchanted Mountain”, through the words of one of its most relevant characters, refers to it as “a politically fishy” reality. Music expresses itself in a very intense way, but always open, not completely determined. Despite of any complex system of notation, a sheet music is just a code of access, a way to realize a connection between you (and of course the systems you are part of) and something that David Bohm would have called “implicate order”, and I call “not-described world”. We act, talk, do with we do and explain what we are doing in a described world, and – recursively - meanwhile we do this all, we decribe the world on and on. But the not described world is always there, we dip in to it. To keep in touch with the not described  world is vital. When we lose this contact troubles arise. These troubles can be “just” something in the realm of feeling about self and existence or loss of emotions and affections, up to de-realization or de-personation. As Ronald Laing noticed, when you loose this contact you are no longer able to produce metaphors.

Arts, and music in a special way, realize in a full way this dimension of contact between the world of our descriptions and the world that is always there, but not described. Making music means to realize metaphors connecting the described and the not described. This can explain the fact that we can hear two performances of the same music and get two completely different experiences. Take the 4^th time of Mozart’s kv 551 (“jupiter”). Listen to a generic performance: it’s always Mozart, very nice music. But listen to what, e.g., Daniel Harding and the Mahler’s Chamber Orchestra do with it.... you get in touch with an ineffable process of creation. Listen to a whatever Verdi’s Falstaff. A masterwork, anyway. But listen to Falstaff in the Toscanini’s and Valdengo’s way. You will feel part of something larger than you.

This was what happened to me when I discovered Puccini’s Turandot.  At the first, I was fascinated by the story: it was very similar to the story of a patient of mine, a young woman suffering of anxiety and panic. This woman gloated seducing men and then abandoning them, making them suffer the most she could. Also her mother had bad symptoms of agony, acrophobia, depression and was cold with her husband. When we found that the great grandmother of my young patient died delivering a child, all the symptoms had a significant remission. The young woman found a steady boyfriend, her mother recovered retrieving autonomy.

With time I found that the chinese story of Turandot was like chinese boxes. There was more and more inside. It was then that I started thinking (not very clearly in the beginning) that psychotherapy is done through our words, actions, descriptions, but its effectiveness resides in the relationship between this and something else. It is a creative process, where affections and emotions have a relevant role (we could say with semantics) not as meanings, but as significants.

When words, actions, emotions are coherent (like light in a laser beam) we have a coherent communication. When two or more persons have coherent communication about “something” yet not described, we have a creative process and a new reality is co-determined. This is what occurs in psychotherapy, but we cannot do this “on purpose”. It is an attitude to rely on, it is promoting conditions to let it happens. You receive from the not described the good metaphor, the right decision.

Gianfranco Cecchin, one of the most creative therapists I’ve ever known, was strongly encouraging me in this direction. I miss a lot the conversations we have had in music and psychotherapy. The last thing we’ve done together has been listening to the final of Rossini’s Guglielmo Tell. Few days after he died.

As time was passing by, I adopted other metaphors: one, very powerful for me, is from the “Air on the Fourth String” by J. S. Bach. Once, in a lecture with worldwide colleagues, I explained my ideas about creativity etc. Then, I took my violin and  played the Air. When I finished I was frightened, because I’m just a so and so player... But a colleague in the public, a nearly unknown man, got up and said “Now that you have played the tune, I’ve understood what you meant with your lecture. It was a bit hazy before, now it’s very neat and clear. Thank you.”

Episodes like this confirmed me in the idea that we can successfully use three types of metaphors to describe the process of psychotherapy:

• narrative
• from mathematics and physics
• poetical/musical

I.e.: to describe what we do in psychotherapy we can tell a story, we can use metaphors from quantum physics, when can make or listen to music.

Three languages, three different descriptions to relate to ineffable mistery of change. Everyone of them has something that the other has not. None of them is complete.

Actually, in my workshop I work mainly with three operas

• Turandot, which refers to many topics: of transgenerational tasks and loyalties which can generate symptoms, the problem of pride, the effects of self-sacrifice etc.

• Verdi’s Otello, about prejudgements and the kind of relations in the couple which reinforce prejudgement. With Otello it is possible to do a delightful and useful exercise of simulation.

• Aida, about the conflict between love in the couple and the loyalty to membership in larger systems.

In the meantime, I’m preparing to propose others…