On our last Friday in Germany, I planned a visit to the Rheinische Landesklinik in Düsseldorf, the psychiatric hospital where I completed my internship and then worked for three years as a music therapist. On Thursday night, several students asked whether this was the last time we’d be visiting a music therapist in a clinical setting. There was a bit of fatigue in their question, and who could blame them? I have been schlepping them from hospital to school to university for three weeks now! I don't think any of them (or I!) realized what an interesting and powerful experience we would have. As it turned out, I think we were all glad we were there.
First we met Franz Mecklenbeck.
Franz is the director of creative therapies at the hospital; he was my internship director at the time and since then, he has had several other interns from the US. Franz is a very special guy, a great therapist and mentor. True to form, he thought the best way for us to learn about his work was to do an improvisation and then talk about it, rather like a therapy session in some ways.
We improvised for at least 30 minutes, and in our discussion afterward we found we were now able to understand some of the things we had heard about in Magdeburg and elsewhere.
Have a look (and listen) to these four short excerpts from our final improvisation on June 23, 2007. The video lasts about two minutes.
2 comments:
Hi guys,
it was a great pleasure have you here in duesseldorf.
Hoping, you will have a smooth trip back to US
Special greetings to Douglas and to all of you
Sincerely
Franz Mecklenbeck
PS
Sarah, love to see you in 2008 :-)
This was definitely my favorite improvisation. Franz, it was wonderful to be with you all in Dusseldorf! :-)
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