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Sound-based interventions: Exploring “conversational jazz” and improvisation for co-creating healing spaces between lifeworlds

jammunication

Inspired by an exploratory session on “Conversational Jazz” originally conducted by Frank Barrett and Barnett Pearce in 2008, CMM Institute Stewards Rik Spann and Bart Buechner designed and presented an interactive workshop on the use of improvisational methods for creating healing conversations at an April, 2025 conference organized by the Schutz Circle in Vienna Austria in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Schutz’s influential paper, titled “On Multiple Realities.” The location itself was a fitting backdrop for this exploration, being a major center for music and the arts, as well as intellectual exploration. Vienna was not only the home of Alfred Schutz, who defined social (‘lifeworld”) phenomenology, but also two pioneers of the psychology world, Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. The latter, like Schutz, took a turn towards the social and communicative dimensions of mental health, and also realized the important role that social construction plays in defining both individual and collective perspectives of “reality.”

multiple realities

Schutz’s vision of « Multiple Realities » realized in 2025

Metaphorically speaking, the interactive session on “Conversational Jazz” struck a strong chord with the 2025 Schutz Circle conference’s subtheme, “Personalities, Pragmatic Affairs, and Playful Worlds” and resonated with observations made in other keynote lectures. These included the observation that “society is constantly changing, and whenever it does, science must start afresh.” Construed broadly, this statement suggests that the seeds of social change are embedded into social media, organizational cultures, and literature – but also implies that these seeds must be expressed, interpreted and shared before they can fully take root, be brought into being, or “emerge.” Construed more narrowly, this statement has implications for addressing tensions between the “medical model” or “expert” approach that presently dominates mental health counselling, and a more natural, mutual, and conversational form of therapy. Much like musicians sometimes use notational conventions (scores and other technical constructs) to share and enact their ideas, science has a place … but it is also important to pay attention to the artistry, creativity, and collaborative energy that emergence between and among performers, and with an audience.

Creating Improvisational Space for Mental Health Counseling

This session was specifically developed as a way to help mental health counselors learn social construction, communication, and improvisational skills that they can use to create conversational space with clients. Rather than trying to add a “new” CMM based therapy in the marketplace, the intention was to create some simple, learnable CMM-based approaches that can be used with other, existing, empirically validated or “evidence-based” therapies. By using these methods to engage responsively and improvisationally with clients, mental health practitioners and peer counsellors can create mutual, purposeful, and co-constructive forms of therapeutic dialogue, with less judgmental or coercive overtones.

Rik and Bart were drawn to introduce CMM to therapists through experiences they have each had with assisting others through mental health challenges, and coming to a realization of the shortcomings of many of the mental health systems now in place. Rik had been meeting episodically with a young woman who had been in and out of the Dutch mental health system, and had learned from her that she could tell “within one minute” if a psychologist would be able to help her or not. The usual barrier was a sense of inauthenticity—a felt sense of the therapist just “going through the motions” of a therapeutic protocol, without making a real human connection. For Bart, who teaches in a military psychology program at Adler University, a similar issue was raised by veterans who struggle with a mental health establishment that prioritizes the use of “evidence-based” therapies for trauma. These therapies are not necessarily aligned with the practical realities of dealing with the difficult transition from military to civilian life, nor assuaging the moral and ethical conflicts that often accompany wartime service. In short, there is a growing awareness that many of the difficulties faced by veterans is not due to combat trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as previously thought, but more often connected to identity and purpose challenges related to “moral injuries,” brought on by reflection on a conflict of deeply held values with actions (by self or others) that contradict the sense of “what is right.” (This phenomenon is explored more deeply in a previous Schutz Circle conference paper by Rik, Bart, and Sergej Van Middendorp, https://cmminstitute.org/moral-injury-on-the-front-lines-of-truth/ )
Using the Metaphors and Methods of Music in Healing Conversations

The first challenge to helping others discover a new way of interacting in a group such as this is to break expected norms, and provide a new “minimal structure” to invite and encourage participation. To engage the Schutz Circle audience, the improvisational portion of the workshop was themed a “Practical Aspects of “Making Music Together in Bridging between Lifeworlds.” This drew on the serious purpose of the overarching conference theme of “multiple realities” while also integrating improvisational concepts from music, poetry, and dance—embodying the “Playful Worlds” dimension of the conference subtheme. Bart and Rik also realized that some preparation would be needed to help participants quickly get into the spirit of the jam. They accomplished this by distributing a conference paper in advance of the workshop—which as it happens was scheduled at the very end of the conference—and also by making a short announcement at the beginning of the conference. In the announcement, participants were asked to listen and pay attention for “magic moments” or emergent episodes, where something unexpected or poignant happened for them, and come to the workshop prepared to share them. This injection of personal experience and freshly emergent meaning over the previous days of the conference helped to make the workshop experience a spontaneous, and sometimes joyful, event. Bart and Rik also modelled the “back-and-forth-ness” of co-creation in their interaction in the workshop session, both with each other, and members of the group, and worked to create a spirit of playful engagement as part of the workshop experience.

bart multiple realities

Bart Buechner facilitates an improvisational workshop,
with a musical nod to a prominent Vienna psychologist.

Setting the Stage

To help them become further grounded in the “practical art” of this session, participants were given some examples of improvisational techniques used by musicians in jam sessions and how they could help conversational partners to enact more creative and generative forms of shared reality among “persons-in-conversation.” The challenge was to keep the theory from getting in the way of the desired quality of experience, all in a very short period of time. Rik and Bart prepared for this session by spending several months experimenting with ways to weave concepts from musicology and CMM into the mix, and to envision ways to allow individuals to merge and harmonize their respective “realities” together in a verbal “jam session.” In doing this, they drew on concepts from Rik’s Taos Institute publication with Simon Martin, “Re-Sounding” and other related conceptual models, including Alfred Schutz’s 1951 essay on “Making Music Together.”  They were also guided by a previous (2018) CMM Institute Learning Exchange in Munich where they worked with fellow CMMI Steward Sergej Van Middendorp to present a session based on musical improvisation as a way to access group creativity and shared vision. In this earlier session, Bart and Rik played instruments, after being introduced to each other by Sergej. It was the first time either of them had ever met, much less played together, and they used no musical notations other than Sergej’s verbal prompts. From this experience, they were inspired by possibilities for strangers to immediately form collaborative frameworks. Connections were then drawn to practical applications for mental health therapists and allies for enacting authentic and healing conversations with those struggling with troubling experiences. For this session, no musical instruments would be used–the improvisation would be all verbal.

bart on bass guitar

Bart and Rik making music together in Munich (2018)

Further development

There remains some additional processing to help refine this approach for the therapeutic context, but several things stand out as significant learnings from this experiment. Firstly, getting people into a space where open sharing is possible requires some deliberate context-setting to ensure that all participants feel welcome and safe.  For an academic conference, the stakes were somewhat lower than in a treatment room, where balancing of power would need to be attended to more directly. But in both cases, use of imaginal techniques, such as envisioning oneself to be a part of a band onstage, or the member of a participating and appreciative audience, are central to success.  Secondly, adding some communicative tools, such as the CMM heuristics, can add to empowerment and sense of efficacy. Among other things, CMM heuristics serve to both direct attention to what is being “made” together in the jam, and they can also add to the virtuosity of the performance itself. Skilful execution, in conversations and in music, are born and honed in practice. Adopting a mental model with some unique identity with which to approach the engagement is also helpful. Rik had earlier coined the phrase “Jammunication” to reflect the practice of concepts of music with the notion of co-construction of meaning in conversation.  The concept also carries a quality of playfulness and improvisation that help to create a more friendly and inviting space for participation. Finally, development of capacities for generous listening (including paying attention to periods of silence) are necessary to achieve qualities of mutuality that can in turn lead to a sense of mutual ownership or co-creation. Listening is necessary for both performers and members of the audience as a way to know how to respond generatively as the music evolves, and to shift between various roles (ie: comping or supporting, soloing or leading, and sustaining the groove). In so doing, roles may shift quickly from performing to listening; being in the audience to being on stage; being in the rhythm section to soloing.  Like other forms of engagement, these abilities deepen and expand with practice.

We look forward to sharing more opportunities for this emerging project with the CMM community in the months ahead.  Please reach out to Rik or Bart if you would like to know more.

bartonbuechner@gmail.com        or        rikspann@gmail.com

 

Links:

Barrett, F. and Pearce, W.B. (2008) Conversational Jazz and Social Construction: Implications for Communication Theory and Management Theory (Video Production) Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara.

View the video recording at:

https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/Vub4EkDehcHTJ1dpCkxuGnSg

Buechner, B. Van Middendorp, S. & Spann, R: (2018). Moral Injury on the Front Lines of Truth: Encounters with Liminal Experience and the Transformation of Meaning. Journal of Schutzian Research 10 (2018) 51-84.

Open Source publication:

https://www.zetabooks.com/docs/Barton-BUECHNER-Sergej-von-MIDDENDORP-Rik-SPANN_Moral-Injury-on-the-Front-Lines-of-Truth_Encounters-with-Liminal-Experience-and-the-Transformation-of-Meaning.pdf

Spann, R. & Martin, S. (2021). Resounding: Introducing an alternative metaphor for organizational change. Taos Institute, Cleveland, OH.

Download open-source paper at:

https://www.taosinstitute.net/product/re-sounding-introducing-an-alternative-metaphor-for-organization-change

Schutz Circle: (2025) VII. Conference of the International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretive Social Science – Personalities, Pragmatic Affairs, and Playful Worlds – “On Multiple Realities” 1945-2025

Conference description on website:

https://www.europeansociology.org/call/fabbeb14-5796-44c7-835d-2f24c8632ec2

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