Frontiers in Psychology, 2018 · DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01422 · Published: August 7, 2018
This study looks at how people recovering from brain or spinal cord injuries use songwriting to understand their experiences. Participants wrote songs about their past, present, and future selves. The researchers found that the songwriting process helped people make sense of their injuries and rebuild their sense of self. The analysis identified four distinct recovery journeys. These journeys included re-evaluating values, finding inner strength, confirming existing beliefs, or still searching for answers. Songwriting can be a helpful tool in neurorehabilitation to help people adjust to their new reality.
Recognizing transformative moments that match one of the four possible recovery journeys might inform whether further exploration is needed.
Songwriting can be used to convey mixed or ambivalent emotions or to further intensify the meaning of the lyrics.
Future research could explore and compare aspects of the music therapy process by improvising on the referential theme of past self, then on present self, and then on an imagined future self.