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A) Evolution / Development

 

The Benenzon Therapy was recognized as one of the five most important models of music therapy during the 9th World Congress of Music Therapy in November 1999.  Prof. Dr. Benenzon began the design of this Therapy in 1969 and since then, it has been developed through a constant evolution of clinical applications, training and supervision of music therapists in various countries of America and Europe.

 

The Benenzon Therapy has a long history and its own theory regarding the applications of psychotherapy in the clinical sector and in the area of primary prevention. The therapy was developed in many different countries due to the efforts of the Benenzon centres. The Benenzon Therapy has been applied in autism and diffuse disorders developing in mental impairment, sensory and mobility disorders, communication disorders, aphasia and reduced hearing, Alzheimer disease and dementia, coma,  patients of final stage,  chronic patients with long hospitalization, addiction patients (drugs, smoking, alcohol), psychological disorders, psychosomatic diseases and eating disorders.       

 

The Benenzon Therapy is defined as a non verbal relational psychotherapy that has to do with the person and not necessarily with the patient.

 

Therefore, the Benenzon model opens a new horizon altering the term “music therapy”, “mutherapy”, “musicpsychotherapy”; terms used for the last 50 years and are nowadays being renamed under the label “Benenzon Therapy” currently in legal process to establish the official name of the model.    

Nevertheless, Prof. Dr. Benenzon considers that the aims of the Benenzon Therapy have a much wider context relating to the primary prevention and the improvement of the quality of life.

 

  • BENENZON THERAPΥ: The Benenzon therapy is part of the methodology and technique of non-verbal psychotherapies. According to the psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Rolando O. Benenzon the Benenzon therapy is a type of psychotherapy which uses body-sound- non-verbal elements in order to develop, process, analyze and reinforce a bond or a relationship between the therapist and the patient (or a group of patients) with the intent to achieve the patient’s wellbeing. The above mentioned is accomplished by the enforcement of the “Ego” via a cathartic course and development which acts through our Sound Identinty (ISO), as represented by sound, acoustic and movement energies that characterize each human.

 

It is important to clarify that the Benenzon Therapy, as is the case of other alternative therapies, does not replace conventional medical treatment. Through the therapeutic meetings, social, physical, emotional, cognitive needs arise due to the engagement of all senses, the mind, the sentiments and the body. The Benenzon Therapy does not cure. The Benenzon Therapy aims to improve the life of the patient through the opening of new communication channels and the development of the therapeutic relation. Up to this point, there exists no ‘therapy’ that can force a disease to disappear but we can support the improvement or the cure of a disease in cooperation with a multidisciplinary team.

B) Points of the Benenzon Therapy

 

  • «The protection of the freedom of the other is the protection of our own. »

  • «The non-verbal allows the expression of those we have not thought, more than those we have conceived and realized. »

  • «The training of the therapist’ adjustment is determined by the intention of realization the self-fulfilling prophecy. »

  • «We attentively listen through those that we have attentively listened and still shall attentively listen, attentively listening. »

  • «Solving those that have been tied up and shall be tied up, tying up».

  • «The intentional lack of intention. »

  • «I act where it does not exist. » (Lacan)

 

      

Influences from other sectors:

Prof. Dr. Benenzon began formulating this therapy in 1969; he organized it and developed it theoretically and practically through 50 years of clinical applications, qualifications and therapeutic supervision in various countries of America and Europe.   


The theoretical background depends on six pillars: art, literature, philosophy, musical training, psychology and quantum physics.

 

 

Art:

  • Pierre Schaeffer /Sound object

  • John Cage / Prepared piano

  • A. Senberg

  • B. Kandinsky

  • Velazquez/ The Maids of Honour

  • Duchamp/ Fountain

  • Dandaism

  • Mardeno

                       

Literature:

  • J. Borges / The Aleph

  • H. Hesse / The Glass Bread Game

  • Cortazar / Rayuela

  • Barrico / Lands of Glass

Philosophy:

  • Adorno / Logic becomes important in order to grasb the real

  • Deleuze / Le pli – Rizoma. Ritornello

  • Derrida / Non-focus, deconstruction, construction

  • Heidegger/ «I exist with the others and I exist in the world. The preparation of freedom.»

  • Italo Calvino / Perseus. Medusa. Lightness.

  • Montaigne / «Neither do I teach nor dogmatize, I narrate.»

  • Paul Virilio / The Aesthetics of Disappearance

  • Plato / The Cave

  • Spinoza / Groups – Conscience. «There exists neither Good nor Bad, but good and bad according to suitability or unsuitability.»

  • Emmanuel Levinas / Captivating the gaze of the other

  • Tzvetan Todorov / The viewpoint of the other 

Music:

  • Dalcroze

  • Vilem

  • Orff

  • Choir Kodaly

 

Psychology:

  • Freud / Unconscious, Energy, Principle of pleasure

  • Winnicott / Transitional object

  • Jung/ Collective Unconscious

  • Watzlawick – Bateson / Analogue communication  

  • Wertheimer – Kohler – Gestalt – Genetic

  • Lacan / Me – other

  • Anzieu / Me – skin

  • Jodorowsky / The holy trap

Quantum Physics:

  • A. Einstein / Ν. Bohr/ D. Bohm / S. Hawking

  • Ι. Prigogine / «The only limitation to which science has a right to is human creativity. »

  • Our observation not only creates the existing reality, but also a story similar to reality.

  • Observation produces the object of observation.

  • Black holes

  • Dark energy

  • Big Bang «No connection becomes possible until it is conceived unconsciously»

C) Glossary

 

  • Cluster of non-verbal (human – communication – human): is the undivided unity of interrelated elements that constitute the communication phenomena amongst people which is the purpose of study in Benenzon therapy.

  • ISO: Is the Sound Identity of the total energies consisting of sounds, movements, smells, colors, emotions, temperature, touch, pauses, silences and other non-recognizable perceptions, characterizing each individual and distinguishing him from the other.

  • Gestalt ISO is the sound identity of the individual itself which is influenced during pregnancy period, genetic inheritance, ecosystem and social environment.

  • The Universal ISO is the real physical-sound-music archetype that consists of the ontogenetic and phylogenetic legacy and characterizes all humans.

  • The Cultural ISO is the combination of energies condensed in pre-conscious which characterize the culture wherein the person grows up.  

  • The Supplementary ISO consists of a combination of energies that appear and disappear according to the psychological situation of the individual and of the relations formed with others. 

  • The Interactive ISO sums up the totality of energies that characterize the relation, the bond, between two or more persons. It is consistent with the characteristics of communicational energetic exchange which is created every time that two or more persons try to interact.   

  • The Family ISO is the combination and the dynamic of the sound, movement energies and the pauses that characterize the particular family group.   

  • The Group ISO is the combination and the dynamics of the sound, movement energies and the pauses that characterize a particular group during the interactive evolution.    

  • The Environmental ISO: Is related to the sounds and relative phenomena that the institution, the school, the teaching room, the hospital ward, the incubator or the office, impact on the patient. We know that each space has its own sound, smell, visual, thermal environmental characteristics as well as rituals through gestures, movement rituals and other indefinite codes of the non-verbal context.

  • The Intercultural ISO: is the Sound Identity which characterizes a specific group of people that had to migrate, to simulate and adjust to another human group.  

  • “The Principle of ISO” is the principle of Benenzon Therapy, which states that in order to open communication channels between patient and therapist it is necessary for the Sound Identities of the patient to be identified and balanced with those of the therapist. This same principle extends to every type of equivalent communication such as family, school, company or institutional-community.

  • The Intermediary Object is every element that assists the transition of physical-sound-music energies with the purpose of achieving communication amongst people. Relative to the way of usage of the physical-sound-music instrument it can be named Defensive Object- Cathartic Object- Totemic Object- Experimental Object- Encapsulated Object-Synthetic Object.      

  • The Totem Phenomenon is the application of rituals under therapeutic treatment, with the purpose of transformation and positive relief restraint of tensions which are dangerous to the integrity and the integration of the individual in a particular group. It is said that the totem phenomenon is the consequence and the depiction of the Group ISO. This phenomenon is extended to all group interaction.    

  • Silence and pauses as means of communication: In the correlation space and in the context of energies that constitute the Sound Identities, there is a basic object through which the totality of silence and pauses is contained.

  • Water as Space (setting): pools, sea.

  • Hydrophones: water drums; water hourglass, bubbles with bulbs.

  • The Therapeutic Time: is the adjustment, the harmony and the balance of the biological and the latent time of the therapist and the patient.  The Latent Time: is the personal time period of each individual that intervenes from the perception of a communicational stimuli combination from someone else, of the process and the clash in the core of non-verbal memory. Then reprocessing the previous clash until the recreation of the answer and the expression of it.

BENENZON INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY

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