Music Therapy Assessment of Automatic Thoughts: Developing a Cognitive Behavioral Application of Improvisation to Assess Couple Communication

ABSTRACT: This article is a description of the Music Therapy Assessment of Automatic Thoughts (MTAAT), a cognitive behavioral intervention designed to help couples improve communication. This method was designed to be a part of the type of communication training exercises that may take place in marriage counseling. It involves spouses taking turns improvising on percussion instruments to depict musically what they perceive as their typical pattern of communication. While one improvises, the other writes thoughts that result from what the other is musically "saying." These are designed to serve as assessments of the automatic, conscious thoughts each spouse has when communicating. The results of an initial clinical application suggest that the MTAAT may successfully enable couples to communicate musically with one another and may reveal a degree of interpersonal knowledge about their relationship and the types of automatic thoughts they have while communicating verbally with one another. The authors suggest the need for research on the applicability of the MTAAT in a marriage counseling setting and other settings where therapists use cognitive behavioral music therapy interventions. The field of marriage counseling can be traced back to the early 1930's (Nichols & Schwartz, 2004). Since that time, marriage counseling has continued to grow and expand as new treatments develop. Marriage counseling is a specialized field of family therapy designed to help individuals adequately prepare for and make adjustments during marriage Qohnson, 1961). Initially, counselors utilized behavioral techniques to help couples improve communication and other types of interactions with operant conditioning (Wetchler & Piercy, 1996). For instance, some counselors used contingency contracting to enhance communication skills and other types of reciprocal behaviors (Nichols & Schwartz, 2004). With the advent of cognitive behaviorism in the 1960's, marriage counselors began to incorporate the theories of Beck (1976) and Ellis (1962) into their methods of treatment. Since that time, marriage counselors have created different cognitive behavioral approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Couples Therapy (CBCT). CBCT developed in the late 1980's as a formal method of treatment (Epstein, Baucom, & Daiuto, 1997). In cognitive behavioral therapy, counselors help individuals gain insight and improve their ability to recognize negative automatic thoughts and change maladaptive beliefs (Abrahms, 1983; Corey, 1996; Epstein, Baucom, & Daiuto, 1997). According to McMinn (1991), automatic thoughts are spontaneous, conscious thoughts that occur in response to specific situations. Since automatic thoughts occur in response to specific situations, they are examined by the therapist because they often reflect a person's core beliefs about those situations or events (Epstein & Baucom, 2002; McMinn, 1991). The manner in which people perceive and structure their experiences determines how they feel, behave and respond (Corey, 1996; Nichols & Schwartz, 2004). Cognitive behavioral therapy maintains that people tend to incorporate faulty thinking into their lifestyle, which leads to emotional and behavioral disturbances (Corey, 1996; Luce, 2001). With the help of the counselor, clients can begin to change false beliefs about themselves and others by recognizing and challenging automatic thoughts that influence problematic behavior. Cognitive behavioral music therapy interventions typically involve the client(s) and therapist(s) making music together within the session (Standley, Johnson, Robb, Brownell, & Kim, 2004). Clients are given the opportunity to recognize cognitions while engaging in an active, music-making process. The experiential characteristics inherent in improvisational music therapy can facilitate "here and now" experiences that can assist couples when using cognitive behavioral interventions to improve their ability to communicate with each other. …