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Catharsis Application Program

How CAP was Developed

In 1981 Dr M.G. Mouret, chief of the Pediatric Psychiatric Department and head of district services for Child Psychiatry at the Limoux Hospital took Dr. Alain Amouyal’s unique music to his clinic. A month later, a psychologist in the clinic asked Dr. Amouyal to provide them additional music. Patients preferred his music to all the others when engaged in therapy. The psychologist observed that Dr. Amouyal’s music prompted them to be more in touch with their emotional issues with the drawings and verbalization. Dr. Amouyal ascribed to the humanist medical philosophy, based on the respect and primacy of the individual. He was constantly looking for new approaches that could relieve human suffering, whether psychological or physical. The fact that children and adolescents with mental disorders felt such a strong connection to his music was compelling. Through his music, he was writing his own story, his own path towards awareness, and his understanding of what is common to all humans. He had never thought about the use of his music in therapy.

Testing and The Emergence of the Catharsis Application Program

Dr. Amouyal organized a five-hour program of music. Dr. Mouret then tested Dr. Amouyal's music and verified both with his staff and his patients that there was more of a marked effect on the imagination with Dr. Amouyal’s compositions than the ones they usually employed. The first phase of the Catharsis Application Program was born. Dr. Mouret was particularly struck by the correlation between the titles and the symbols depicted by the listeners, although the themes of the music were never communicated to the patients. He felt that the music's impact was possibly due to a resonance with people's emotional and mental sphere, and was able to play the role of revealer and activator of the unconscious and its archetypes.

The archetypes – unconscious dynamics – have the ability to put the “Me” in motion. A unique creative process is exhibited when drawing or painting is associated with musical induction.

Dedicated practitioners, Dr. Amouyal himself, and a group of doctors, nurses, teachers, psychotherapists, and music therapists began to invest in research around Dr. Amouyal’s music. As research began, Dr. Amouyal’s scientific and academic training prompted him to insist on the most rigorous research models from the beginning. Along the way Chantal Desmoulins, student at the Center for Research on the Imagination (an international organization), and Dr. Amouyal met and began collaborating. Ms. Desmoulins research focused on the study of the organized system of images and symbols. Dr. Amouyal and Ms. Desmoulins combined their skills with doctors, nurses, teachers, psychotherapists, and music therapists. Their research work in medical and pedagogical settings was motivated by a desire to unify humanness and precision, metaphysical awareness and strict methodology.

In 1985, the rehabilitation psychiatric clinic, Relaxazur, in Cassis, under the direction of Dr. Duclaud became the experimental center where all of Dr. Amouyal’s newly composed music was introduced to patients and where Dr. Duclaud evaluated the impact of their responses. After having received observations from medical and psychiatric colleagues, they began collaboration to define a preliminary protocol. With experts in cognition, testing, evaluation, psychology and symbolism they refined the experimental protocol for testing, data analysis, and interpretation. To this protocol, Chantal Desmoulins added an original program of linguistic analysis she created specifically for it. Over a three-year period, Chantal Desmoulins continued to implement the Catharsis Application Program (CAP) by training staff and supervising the graphic expression. CAP was tested at a psychiatric rehabilitation clinic. The results of this experiment confirmed that the experimental group presented the greatest recovery in terms of healing or improvement of symptoms. In 1988, the Convergences organization hosted a conference entitled “Creation and Madness,” in which Dr. Verdeau Paillès presented Dr. Amouyal's psycho-musical research. She expressed the following observations:

“Dr. Amouyal considers artistic, vocal, instrumental, graphic, and corporal expression, as we all do; an essential tool for communication and personal balance, in addition to being potential sources of creativity, which in certain cases need to be discovered and developed. Thanks to years of research, he has produced an original music medium that can help medical and mental health practitioners in their daily procedures. With Dr. Amouyal's music, we conducted individual psychotherapy sessions with patients suffering from a severe form of neurosis. Unquestionably, this technique helped patients overcome certain obstacles in the healing process. The music fulfilled its role as a therapeutic tool. “

A partnership with Ms. Leneveu, a retirement home director in Paris, and with Professor Hugonot, Head of Geriatric Service at the Grenoble Hospital, was begun to implement the program as a complementary tool to patients and their families. It was soon evident that those who participated gained an understanding that helped them cope with the medical-social issues surrounding their cognitive disorder.

Catharsis Application Program: A Structured Therapeutic Format

Dr. Duclaud at Relaxazur strongly encouraged Dr. Amouyal and Ms. Desmoulins to train a number of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists and nurses, in order to assure the continuation of this therapeutic tool. He stated, “This method has to survive beyond us. Thousands of patients need to benefit from it.”

Over the next two years, their collaborations permitted them to improve their training program and to create a new product. The “Catharsis Kit,” a name prompted by Chantal Desmoulins trainees, was established to consolidate all the program materials together in a structured format. Chantal Desmoulins continues to train practitioners through the Orpheus Institute for private practice, retirement homes, and rehabilitation centers while supervising the analysis sessions for the drawings.

Learn more about CAP METHODOLOGY

A program which weaves art & music into a unique and unprecedented therapeutic intervention. A very structured methodology for accurately assessing the nature of a problem and for monitoring treatment progress. A groundbreaking artistic mediation which addresses deep emotional core issues unobtrusively and can overcome clients resistance to change.

When therapists choose to use the CAP methodology that combines drawing under musical induction, writing and verbalization, they provide their clients with a very efficient tool to become active participants in their own treatment and thus facilitate self-discovery, change, and restoration.

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