DOI: 10.1002/jclp.

22579

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Playing off the beat: Applying the jazz paradigm

to psychotherapy
David Read Johnson

Post Traumatic Stress Center, New Haven, CT

Correspondence
Abstract
David Read Johnson, PhD, 19 Edwards Street, A jazz paradigm is applied to traditional psychotherapy practice,
New Haven, CT 06511. illuminating the links between psychotherapy and the Romantic
Email: [email protected]
aesthetic tradition, primarily in the centrality of concepts such
as attunement. Modernist disruptions of realism during the early
20th century, such as jazz, elaborated dissonant and improvisational
artistic impulses that brought new vitality to their art forms. The
psychotherapeutic relationship also has potential avenues for mul-
tilevel and discrepant communication that open possibilities of free-
dom. However, the limitations imposed by the single channel nature
of comprehended language, compared with the capacity of artis-
tic media to express multiple sensory information simultaneously,
remain the most significant obstacle to dimensionalizing the psy-
chotherapeutic dialogue. Psychotherapy may have much to gain from
embracing some of the concepts underlying the jazz aesthetic.

KEYWORDS
dimensionalization, dissonance, jazz, psychotherapy, Romantic era

If the psychotherapeutic interaction were a musical performance, what kind of music would it be: classical, romantic,
modern, or postmodern? Who would be playing the melody and who would be supporting the harmony and rhythm?
Indeed, many long-term psychotherapies seem to settle into a stable rhythm, with a predictable meter and song. The
client's neurotic conflicts and habitual adaptive strategies as well as the therapist's personal style are gradually woven
together in a fairly patterned tapestry and tune. The stability and familiarity of the therapeutic alliance support the
corrective emotional experience that many clients seek, having too often been tossed about by moments or more of
neglect, disinterest, betrayal, inconsistency, or even abuse by those who should have cared for them. The ideal therapist
is often imagined as a safe, holding container, a good enough mother, or a reflective, warm, genuine, authentic, and
sincere witness–a responsive, validating presence.
These images are embedded in the Romantic aesthetic, which rose in influence in the arts and literature in the late
1700s through the late 1800s, but which has remained alive and well in our daily lives ever since (Blanning, 2012).
Though the Romantic lens has been viewed pejoratively as naïve and old-fashioned, it nevertheless has exerted a pow-
erful and long-lasting impact on modern life. From romance novels and romantic comedies, ballads and water-colored
landscapes, the melodramas of daily TV series to the fascination with the Hero's journey, many people love the out-
ward journey, only to come home, again. Ironically, though all the arts experienced a profound transformation from

J. Clin. Psychol. 2018;74:249–260. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jclp 

c 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 249
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the Romantic to the Modernist paradigm over a 100 years ago and into the postmodern era over 50 years ago, psy-
chotherapy as a field seems to have taken a different path. In this essay, I will explore the reasons for this by comparing
psychotherapy and jazz.
The Modern aesthetic broke the unity, wholeness, and solace of the Romantic paradigm, causing tremendous dis-
tress, whether in Cubism, modern dance, absurdist theater, jazz, or experimental literature. Each of these new methods
was initially viewed as ruining their particular art form. Of these, jazz introduced a destabilizing conversational, inter-
actional component never seen before. If Classical music was intended to enlighten, and Romantic music to evoke deep
emotion, then jazz was to enliven. As psychotherapy came into its own after World War II and amalgamated psycho-
dynamic and client-centered perspectives, a consensus of sorts developed that has defined and to some degree placed
limitations on the role of the psychotherapist. These restrictions no doubt were influenced by the abuse of author-
ity common in the families of clients, as well as the mid-century descent of a civilized society in Germany, leading to
valuing therapist characteristics such as nondirectiveness, authenticity, humility, patience, reflectiveness, empathy,
attunement, positive regard, and congruence (Gergen, 1991; Rogers, 1961). These values correspond to music that
is harmonious and plays on the beat. Jazz, in distinction, encourages departure from the beat and harmony, and even
the melody, embracing spontaneous dissonances, provocations, surprises, and playful divergence, not unlike the con-
comitant expressionist inclinations in visual art, dance, and literature.
Though many psychotherapists may have felt the urge to shake their long-term clients out of their repeating weekly
tale with the equivalent of a surprising crash of cymbals, a driving bebop riff, or one of Thelonius Monk's wrong notes,
therapists generally feel hesitant to risk such departures. Ironically, countless tales of critical moments in psychother-
apy highlight these unexpected behaviors by therapists. Has the profession boxed itself into a role too tightly? Or has
the psychotherapist become one of those foundation stones of stability, like priests or judges, from whom experimen-
tation is not welcome?
Jazz in particular is a relevant art form with which to compare psychotherapy, because jazz turned music into an
improvisational conversation (with structure). The psychotherapeutic interaction, though certainly structured, is in its
essence also an improvisational conversation between two people. How comparable are the underlying structures and
improvisational methods of these two human activities? Though certainly a painting is the result of a conversation
between the artist and what he or she is painting, and a modern dance may be the result of improvisational explorations
among the dancers, most modern art forms result in a set piece. Jazz, like psychotherapy, does not.

1 THE TRANSITION FROM ROMANTIC TO MODERN ERAS INVOLVED

A SHIFT FROM ATTUNEMENT TO DISSONANCE AS THE BASIS
FOR AESTHETICS

The beginning of the 20th century marked a significant transformation in aesthetic sensibility across the fields of art,
literature, and philosophy. The remnants of the Romantic era fell away as Modernism broke into the open, in part a
reaction to the tremendous strides by science in understanding the world: in biology (evolution and genetics), chem-
istry (atoms and molecules), physics (electrodynamics and relativity), economics, and medicine (bacteria). Psychoanal-
ysis developed during this same period and contributed significantly to the modernist worldview that worlds of uncon-
scious ideas and imagery were beneath the surface of our conscious minds.
These discoveries laid bare an amazing and shattering truth: that underneath observable reality lay another world
of elemental objects and forces, unseen yet constitutional. The Romantic notion of the individual's alignment within
nature, of simple and whole relations, which itself had been a reaction against the Neoclassical values of pure form
revisited during the Enlightenment, was now revealed to be naïve. What we experience as given in the natural world
is really explained by deeper processes. Artists joined scientists in delving into the depths, pulling apart and dissect-
ing experience. The previous realism in visual art began to shake, shimmer, and swerve in Impressionist, Pointilist,
and Expressionist paintings (Harries, 1968). In music, ornamental techniques, such as glissando and portamento
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(sliding across notes), polyrhythms in ragtime (ragged time), bent and blue notes (playing just slightly lower pitch on the
3rd , 5th , or 7th notes of a chord), and textured dissonances were increasingly used. All of these quiverings in traditional
forms built to the revolution in modern art that peaked between 1905 and 1925.
Within a little more than a decade, Picasso's desmoiselles d'Avignon (1907) initiated the Cubist revolution; Isadora
Duncan's freeform improvisations unleashed modern dance; James Joyce's experiments deconstructed language;
Marcel Duchamp turned theater upside down in Dada and absurdism; and Jazz revolutionized musical expression.
These experimentations with form were all propelled by the same sentiment that coherence, congruence, and unity
no longer expressed modern human experience. In each of these arenas, the revelation of underlying elements within
observable things forced the conclusion that the world consisted of combinations, that life was therefore a cascade of
recombination, not a unified whole.
In the Romantic era, the Dionysian (i.e., the chaotic, sexual, and mystical) and Apollonian (i.e., the rational, symmetric,
and orderly) sensibilities coexisted in relative balance, sometimes referred to as aesthetic distance, where form and
feeling are integrated, allowing one to witness a nude sculpture without being sexually aroused (Scheff, 1979; Selz
& Chipp, 1982). The first thrusts of modern art, Cubism in particular, reveal both the geometry and the chaos, only
without the integration, thus making the viewer conscious of the distinction.
The Modernist conscious fracturing of realism led to two diverging paths to abstraction: some artists migrated
toward the Apollonian values of pure form, while others were drawn to the dense jumble of impulse. Apollonian
abstraction involves negation: it removes the particular, eliminates diversity, moves toward the universal, and cele-
brates mind. Piet Mondrian's increasingly spare drawings of geometric forms, or John Cage's increasingly minimalistic
compositions, or Beckett's skeletal plays, are examples of this path. Its project ends in the white square (art), the ulti-
mate representation of nothingness and freedom (Baier & Dumpelmann, 2014); or in Cage's famous composition 4’33”
(Cage, 1952), holding his hands just above the piano, in silence, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Though freedom from
place, identity, and time was paramount, the essence of this line was certainty:

“(This new art), by creating equilibrium, excludes any uncertainty. The tyranny of the tragic is over…(The new
art) is characterized by security, it does not ask questions, it offers a solution.” (Italo, 1970, p. 41)

The alternate route of abstraction, the Dionysian, spurns negation: it says, “Yes.” It celebrates the particular; it
encompasses, swallows, and eliminates divisions (for divisions are negations). It accepts the tangle, the jungle, and the
mess of Being. This approach is apparent in expressionists, such as Kandinsky and Pollock (art), in jazz, Schoenberg, and
Stravinsky (music), and in Artaud and the early Grotowski (theater). The Dionysian instinct points to fullness, to more
and more paint, more and more sound, ultimately leading (in art) to the black square:

“Our restless eye refuses it and endows the black surface with mysterious life. Like wind breaking the deadly calm
of the mirror-like surface of a lake, our eye creates fleeting shadows, images, hallucinations. We cannot control
our vision.” (Harries, 1968, p. 108)

In music, this sensibility leads ultimately to the driving layers of sound of free jazz artists, such as Ornette Coleman
and Cecil Taylor, whose music evokes a cascade of those fleeting images that we cannot control. The Apollonian led to
silence; the Dionysian to noise.

2 JAZZ INTRODUCED AN INTERPERSONAL DIMENSION INTO

AESTHETIC SENSIBILITY

Until 1925, Western music and most other music had been played on the beat. Even African music consisted of
polyrhythmic combinations played to an underlying unified beat. During the Classical period, the emphasis was on
the myriad relations among scales, tempos, and harmonies, to attain beauty, the sublime, the “celestial song.” Beauty
was in essence, proportion (e.g., the Parthenon; Michelangelo's David). In the Romantic period, the emphasis shifted to
the evocation of emotion through music, beauty now being associated with pleasure and pain, with the excitement of
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conflict and the solace of nostalgia. By the end of the 19th century, the boundaries of scales and harmonies were being
tested, and just as in visual arts where the lines began to shimmer and objects blend, musicians began to explore atonal-
ities, new syncopations (ragtime), and improvisations. Though some of these efforts occurred within academic music,
most were being explored in the African American communities of New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, in
funeral marching bands, ragtime, and blues (Gioia, 1997; Ward & Burns, 2000).
Music is organized in a set of layers, beginning with a rhythmic beat, usually played by the percussionists (drum,
cymbal, and piano), which sets the tempo; a chord progression that provides the harmony, usually played by piano, guitar,
or other string instruments, supported by the tuba or bass which plays the root note of each chord; and the melody
consisting of notes within the chord, played by the lead instrument, often a wind instrument, such as clarinet, trumpet,
saxophone, or vocals (due to the fact that these instruments can only play one note at a time). In traditional music, all
of these elements are aligned with each other, though alterations in accents, changes in key, and variations in tone are
allowed.
In November, 1925, in a recording studio of an arranged band called the Hot Fives, Louis Armstrong did what no
other musical artist had ever done: he consciously chose to play off the beat: as the lead on trumpet and vocals, he first
hit his notes from the melody just slightly ahead of the beat (i.e., the rhythm played by the band), and then he swung
around and hit notes just slightly behind the beat. This created a discernible tension and instability in the music because
during these moments the band was not playing entirely together. Armstrong then came back to the beat and the ten-
sion subsided, creating a feeling of relief, of coming home. Now, though few members of the public who heard this
recording knew what was happening, just about every musician alive who heard it was instantly floored. When asked
why he did not play on the beat, Armstrong famously said, “Because I know where the beat is” (Ward & Burns, 2000,
p. 115). That is, the variation off the expected beat–the disrupted repetition–expressed the individual musician's
unique experience at that moment, rather than the intention of the composer. This information was therefore a per-
sonal communication to the other members of the band. What guided these departures? “How I feel at the time” (Gioia,
1997). Picasso similarly noted, “When we invented Cubism we had no intention whatever of inventing Cubism. We
wanted simply to express what was in us” (Selz & Chipp, 1982, p. 271).
Armstrong's extensive rhythmic variations, and many other innovative disruptions and improvisational maneuvers,
coalesced jazz as a modern art form (Brothers, 2014). As in Cubism and abstract expressionism, breaking the rules
allowed individuality to reveal itself within a repeating form. What we now take for granted was at the time an achieve-
ment no one foresaw. For centuries, Art had attempted to reveal the Divine in pure Form, the Ideal, the Powerful, as
a means of escaping the mundane, the grist, the pain, and the smallness of daily life. Art was not intended to reveal an
individual person's feelings or perspectives. In contrast, Armstrong sang his music along with the music; he made music
personal.
If I were to try to demonstrate swing within this text, I would have to find a way to vary the underlying meter of my
writing, or, your, reading, in a manner that expresses my personal feelings, while writing this as a communication to you,
outside, of the man – i - fest content of the text. My intent would be to express two levels of information simultaneously.
You can imagine how some listeners of this complex new music found it to be disorienting and unpleasant!
The swing era began, but the music still supported the melody, the harmony, and the beat, so people were able to
dance and sing to it. The bending of time and the increased reliance on improvisational departures gave life and drive
to the new music, which crossed over from the African American community to the popular culture within a short time.
The jazz song is organized in a 32 bar chord progression, with a set key and ground beat (usually 4/4). The soloists
take turns improvising within the specific chords, which consist of three to four notes. As jazz matured, musicians
became bolder in their improvisations but sometimes their departures from the melodic and rhythmic line were so
great the band lost its bearings, and the music fell apart, losing too much coherence, even for jazz musicians. The situa-
tion was not unlike an abstract painting that looks more like random splotches of color instead of a Kandinsky or Klee.
This challenge was solved in the early 1940s by Charlie Parker, with help from Dizzy Gillespie. Parker figured out
that he could depart completely from the established chord progression of the song in a rapid cascade of notes of his
choosing–while the band was playing the rhythm and harmony–only to re-harmonize or resolve the notes by landing
on the original chord at exactly the right time, at the end of a measure (Woldeck, 1998). The result was playing two
JOHNSON 253

different melodies at the same time in a manner that retained the musical coherence and listening pleasure, though
with a substantial increase in liveliness, tension, and surprise. This achievement was no small task, for it required all
players to know where they were within the 32 bar structure, and in essence to be playing the scored song in their
heads as the soloist was playing something else! To the audience, the melody disappeared, which made bebop hard if
not impossible to dance to. When asked why he did not play the melody, Parker responded, much like Louis Armstrong
had previously, that he already knew the melody (Ward & Burns, 2000, p. 308). As a courtesy, bebop songs usually begin
with two measures of the melody to communicate to the audience what song is being played, before the improvisational
departures, and ending with a two measure repeat of the melody.
Other innovations in rhythm and harmony included shifting the accent from the strong beats (the 1st and 3rd ) to
the weak beats (2nd and 4th ) as well as Thelonius Monk's discordant wrong notes or bombs, which broke up creep-
ing convergences or repetitions. Monk, again seemingly randomly, chose not to play certain notes: “It's not the notes
you play, it's those you leave out” (Gioia, 1997, p. 244). All of these bebop innovations kept the music off balance and
alive.
By finding ways to dimensionalize music into additional melodies and personal expressions, bebop made music inter-
personal and thus added a completely new element into ensemble playing. Audiences to modern jazz became witnesses
to the players, who are audience to each other, sometimes commenting out loud among themselves. Thus, jazz pro-
duced a revolution in art: it created a method for individual expression of feeling within a scored text, creating the
basis for much later forms of artistic expression including beat poetry, rock and roll, hip hop and rap, spoken word, and
performance art.

3 PSYCHOTHERAPY MAINTAINS STRONG TIES TO THE ROMANTIC

AESTHETIC TRADITION

As previously noted, the Romantic worldview emerged as a reaction against the rationality and purity of the Enlight-
enment, which had brought forward Classicism with the newfound discoveries of mathematics, science, logic, and phi-
losophy. Influenced in part by the exciting but disruptive democratic Revolutions in the late 1700s, followed by two
decades of conflict in the Napoleonic wars, the Romantic impulse involved a return to Nature and the simple life. Sub-
jects of art and literature shifted from the aristocracy to the common man (Blanning, 2012). The Nude of the Classic era
highlighted the Ideal Human Form, while the nude in the Romantic era showed people among the countryside, among
animals, tilling the land, being together. The essential vision was of being in tune, aligned with each other and nature.
Authenticity, sincerity, and honesty were the prime virtues. Emotions were encouraged. A division was drawn between
the benign nature of one's own home and countryside, and that of the outside world. One journeyed outward into for-
eign territory at some risk, only to return home and to the warmth of one's family and hearth. Out of this sentiment and
consistent with the colonialism rampant at the time, the Hero's Journey reflects the quintessential Romantic mythic
understructure, calling up elements of the Medieval quest.
There are many parallels between Romanticism and implicit values of psychotherapy (Gergen, 1991). In the fol-
lowing discussion I will refer to “psychotherapy” as it is generally practiced in outpatient settings as an exploratory
activity, acknowledging that there are many types of psychotherapy. I will not address highly specialized forms of psy-
chotherapy, which would make this discussion impossibly long. With the exception perhaps of paradoxical family ther-
apy, psychotherapists are trained in a worldview where empathic connection, emotional attunement, authenticity, and
sincerity are highly valued. Nodding “yes, I understand,” mirroring back “so you feel she misread you…”, not giving
one's opinions or too much advice, maintaining positive regard and holding back on one's criticisms, validating clients
from within their own internal frame of reference, and providing a “safe space,” are reflective of Romantic sentiments.
These methods reveal an implicit aim to create an intimate, open, and convergent flow of understanding and connec-
tion between the client and the therapist, and implicitly an attitude toward minimizing discrepancy or dissonance in
the therapeutic dialogue (Bohart & Greenberg, 1997; Rogers, 1951). Disagreement, lack of understanding, or tension
is generally viewed as signs of obstacles to be overcome in the therapeutic relationship.
254 JOHNSON

Jean Piaget (1962) noted that healthy adaptation occurs when there is a balance between the processes of assimi-
lation and accommodation. Assimilation is the process of applying internal schemas to external objects, leading to new
uses of objects. Accommodation is the process of altering internal schemas to match the characteristics of external
objects, leading to learning new behaviors. Thus, client-centered approaches emphasize assimilation, as clients are
mirrored, positively regarded, and viewed from their own frame of reference; internal schemas are recognized and
validated. Cognitive behavioral approaches on the other hand emphasize accommodation, as the client's thinking and
behaviors are identified as faulty and in need of correction through learning new skills. Balancing these processes is
certainly an important aspect of the fine art of psychotherapy. The therapist must establish to some degree an atmo-
sphere of support and understanding, yet at the same time confront, challenge, and guide the client to change their
attitudes or behaviors, since presumably some of them have been unhelpful, dysfunctional, or burdensome.
A good example of a naturally occurring form of this balanced response is healthy mothers’ interactions with their
infants. Daniel Stern (2000) discovered that healthy mothers showed a high degree of attunement and mirroring in
their interactions with their infants, but that they also employed a process that Stern called purposeful misattunement,
in which

“the mother intentionally over- or under- matched the infant's intensity, timing, or behavioral shape…. The
mother ‘slipped inside of’ the infant's feeling state far enough to capture it, but she then misexpressed it enough
to alter the infant's behavior but not enough to break the sense of an attunement in process.” (p. 148)

Purposeful misattunement is a fine way to describe jazz. It is an intentional departure from the expected as a means
of effecting a change in the other, or as a way of communicating a specific feeling to the other person. Do psychother-
apists, like mothers and jazz musicians, use purposeful misattunement? Certainly, there are many times we are misat-
tuned! But not purposefully. Purposeful misattunement in psychotherapy might be viewed as manipulation or a form
of dishonesty. In a jazz ensemble, all parties are aware of and have consented to this process. A jazz-based psychother-
apy would require consensual understanding with the client that the therapist will intentionally be discrepant. Yet it
seems inconceivable that there could be a psychotherapy in which the therapist says, “In this work, I will say things that
are not quite true, or not how I feel, or purposefully not in line with what you are saying, to create an imbalance in you
that might lead to productive changes in your behavior.” These observations raise the core question: how amenable is
psychotherapy to embracing modernist principles of dissonance and creative disorder?

4 CAN THERE BE A PSYCHOTHERAPY BASED ON PRINCIPLES

OF INSTABILITY RATHER THAN STABILITY?

The psychotherapy of severe mental illness or within inpatient settings has and perhaps always will be based on the
goal of achieving stability, and is not the subject of this essay. But the degree to which the psychotherapeutic encounter
should aim for dynamic rather than static equilibrium has been a central question for many years. I believe there are
two critical impediments to the application of jazz concepts into psychotherapy: 1) the linear nature of verbal commu-
nication and its impact on the capacity for dimensionalization; and 2) the nature of authority embedded within the role
system of therapist and client.
The psychotherapeutic medium has a limited number of channels within which to express discrepant communica-
tions. As noted before, the canvas, the stage, and the audio environment allow multiple expressive elements to coexist
simultaneously without producing interference. Artistic dissonance varies just slightly from the harmonic: the music
is bent, the color is smeared, and the form wobbles. Picasso illustrated two views of one person at the same time in
his Cubist renderings of human faces. In Ulysses (1920) and Finnegans Wake (1924–1939), James Joyce painstakingly
formulated a condensed language where nearly every word was a double entendre (e.g., “Finnegan” = the end, again;
or “my feary father” = my fearful and fiery father). This broad bandwidth so to speak encourages complex interactions
among disparate elements, in space and/or in time. Comprehended language, as a medium, is almost entirely linear:
JOHNSON 255

each word and phrase and sentence fills the channel, and listening to two sentences at the same time creates interfer-
ence. Let me demonstrate:

Even though our brain is capable of processing multiple complex stimuli simultaneously, regrettably consciousness
seems to have ears for only one.
The lack of multiple channels directly impacts the ability of comprehended language to dimensionalize experience.
Let me explain: Stereoscopic depth perception is created by the brain when it receives two slightly different images
from each of our two eyes: the brain integrates and explains this difference through a perceptual reorganization that
creates depth. The same process occurs in stereophonic sound: the brain hears two slightly different versions of a
recording from each channel and then constructs a spatial representation of the location of the sound. Our ears/brain
are so sensitive that we can perceive slight changes in the location of sound coming from behind us, both horizontally
and vertically, simply because of the slight differences in sensation received by our two ears.
What Armstrong and Parker did to revolutionize music was essentially the same process: by introducing slight vari-
ations within the music, the brain creates a dimensionalized experience of the music to explain these differences. In
the case of jazz, this dimensionalization is not represented spatially, but psychically, giving a fuller feeling of life to the
music. This enigmatic feel is what is known as swing: “an irresistible gravitational buoyancy that defies mere verbal
definition….free speech in music….the liberty a soloist has to play music in the way he feels it” (Brothers, 2014, p. 82).
Swing is the result of opening up two slightly different tracks in the music and allowing the brain to do the rest.
Establishing multiple tracks, then, is the critical ingredient that could transform traditional psychotherapy into a
jazz-based form, in which the performance of discrepancies and discordances are woven into each encounter.
The psychotherapeutic interaction does have a number of sources of discrepancy that could serve as a basis for a
jazz-informed style. First and foremost are the natural and intentional variations in normal speech, in which the repeat-
ing forms of words are infused with spontaneous inflections, pauses, and tonal shifts that communicate the unique
meaning of what one is feeling at that moment. These nonrepeating elements are easily identified and communicate
the person's feelings and desires. One can easily identify the computerized voice who speaks. in. even. measure. Human
speech to some extent already swings around the beat. No matter how accurate the sound of the words of the computer
voice will be, we will be able to identify the difference between human and computer, because in the back and forth of
conversation, the computer will not be able to spontaneously generate the variations that communicate its personal
desire, because the computer has no desire.
A second and important source of discrepancy occurs between the verbal and nonverbal behaviors: the body pos-
ture and shifting, the look of the face and eyes, the unintended gestures, the blushing, sneezing, and wiggle of the foot.
In addition, the tone, rhythm, hesitation, and speed of the voice may be consistent or inconsistent with the content of
the words. These discrepancies are cross-modal (verbal and nonverbal), rather than unimodal (within the music itself)
as they are in jazz. Additionally, these behaviors are primarily commented upon by the therapist about the client, and
not the reverse, even though of course the therapist is at times also engaging in these behaviors. It might be possible
that a therapist could mirror back verbally what the client said verbally, while at the same time mirror their nonverbal
behavior in their body. However, without the mutual awareness that this type of communication is to be expected, a
jazz-like interaction could not be achieved, and the therapist will be open to criticism for manipulating the client.
256 JOHNSON

Third, there is the discrepancy between the actual relationship between client and therapist, and the imagined rela-
tionship between them within the transference and countertransference. The therapist's responsibility is to be aware
of these discrepancies and not to be disturbed by them nor attempt to eliminate or avoid them, but point them out to
the client when and if that becomes useful. Again, any intentional manipulation of these discrepancies (such as acting
in a manner that enhances or alters a transferential relationship) will find little support among psychotherapists. It is
generally understood that transferential relationships are natural occurrences and should be dealt with sincerely, con-
sistent with Romantic values. When moments of aesthetic distance occur in which the simultaneous presence of the
real relationship and the transferential relationship are in balance and mutually recognized, the therapeutic encounter
can have as much wonder and awe as any work of art.
Fourth, there is the discrepancy between what clients verbalize and what they actually believe. Carl Rogers's reflec-
tive technique brilliantly reveals this dissonance by simply repeating back to clients what they have just said. Though
this technique is intended to communicate that the therapist has accurately heard clients’ messages, often when clients
hear what they said, they realize they do not entirely agree with it, and wish to make revisions. Internal conflicts and
defenses are often quickly exposed through this technique.
Thus, while there are a number of potential sources of discrepancy within a standard psychotherapeutic encounter,
the means by which they can be used to dimensionalize the experience remains elusive. The presence and management
of these discrepancies appears to remain largely within the territory of the therapist's understanding.
Interestingly, there has been evidence of increased dimensionalization within psychotherapy in metaphors for the
therapist's role. Initial metaphors for the therapist were the two-dimensional (2D) surfaces of the mirror or the blank
screen. The mirror is even slightly less than 2D because the surface of the mirror denies itself as a surface: one sees
images only beyond its surface. Even a small piece of dirt or mark on the mirror will disturb this illusion. Countertrans-
ference becomes conceptualized as distortion in or marks on this reflecting mirror due to issues in the history or per-
sonality of the therapist. The metaphor of the blank screen at least locates the image on the 2D surface of the screen.
Countertransference is any type of mark or imperfection on the screen that makes it less blank or clear. Both of these
metaphors fit in with the view that psychotherapy's purpose is to reveal and provide insight, through reflection, and
the therapist aims to be as pure, clear, and still as possible to prevent distortion in this reflective process.
The therapist then became characterized more as a flexible mold, as if made of soft clay, into which the client made
an impression, being a 2D surface with some depth. Countertransference was conceptualized as any type of rigidity
or resistance within the therapist that might impede an accurate impression. Next came the metaphor of the therapist
as a resonator, containing the capacity to resonate with corresponding aspects of the internal processes of the client
(Bohart & Rosenbaum, 1995). Countertransference now was any restriction in the range of possible resonance, as if
one might be missing a particular internal tuning fork. Both these metaphors emphasize the openness, flexibility, and
receptivity of the therapist, having a capacity to sense and feel rather than know and reflect. Psychotherapy's purpose
is seen as deepening the client's capacity to feel and express emotion, to transcend numbing and rigidity.
The next development is the notion of the therapist as a full-fledged, three-dimensional container, who holds clients
psychically inside him or herself, allowing them the safety and freedom to play and express themselves at will. Coun-
tertransference is now viewed as a lack of tolerance, inconsistency in holding, an avoidance of intimacy; the therapist
is there not simply to reflect or share feeling, but to care for, to love. The therapist needs to be reliable, consistent,
and present. These metaphors correspond loosely to the shifting of the field from ego psychological to object rela-
tional, interpersonal, and attachment orientations. They emerge in the history of psychotherapy at a time of tremen-
dous fracturing of family integrity and increasing disconnection and insecurity in society. The container metaphor has
since inspired interest in mentalization (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002), which emphasizes the importance of
understanding others as having separate internal worlds from oneself. It is surely not a coincidence that this metaphor
arose at a time of pervasive computerization and artificial intelligence, psychotherapists now being needed to remind
ourselves that we are not robots.
The spatial dimensionalization of the therapist's role has not been accompanied by a corresponding dimension-
alization of the relational component. From mirror to container, these metaphors emphasize fundamentally static
and receptive qualities, as opposed to viewing the therapist as a potential source of action, challenge, or surprise.
JOHNSON 257

Metaphors for the therapist's role emphasize attunement and convergence, while countertransference or therapist
initiative are often viewed as a source of unwanted divergence.
A psychotherapy embracing a jazz paradigm might imagine the therapist as a co-player, one who is not only alert
to the communications of the client, but also highly responsive to them. Therapist and client will be like acrobats, who
sense the minute shifts in balance of their partner, and shift their own weight accordingly, almost instantaneously,
maintaining a dynamic balance that is always in motion. Countertransference here is not only not noticing the
variations, but also not responding to them. This metaphor underscores different values in the therapist's role: the
capacity for action, not stillness; a shift from vertical to horizontal authority relations; and a sharing of responsibility
for the boundaries of the encounter. Such a conceptualization is captured to some extent by the notion of the
therapeutic encounter as a bi-personal field that is co-created and lies psychically between the two parties (Langs,
1976). These ideas lead us to a consideration of the nature of authority within psychotherapy in comparison to
jazz.
The nature of authority in the psychotherapeutic relationship is another limiting factor in applying jazz concepts to
psychotherapy. In the good enough mother paradigm, the therapist/mother provides the container within which the
child is free to play. The container is solid, stationery, benign, and protective. The inner space is open, safe, and free,
like a playground with the mothers watching. This model places the therapist at the boundary, as a protective witness,
and a nonparticipant in the free play of the client's imagination. In contrast, a jazz-based psychotherapy will place the
responsibility for the containing and contained roles with both therapist and client, allowing the therapist to join the
play. How much the therapist is allowed to participate in the play of a session has consumed volumes of study, but
generally speaking the profession is very wary of therapist participation, either in the context of countertransference
(psychodynamic models) or imposing an external frame (client-centered models). Similarly, therapist self-disclosure
has been characterized both as an opportunity to bring more life and engagement into the work, as well as introducing
unnecessary material that burdens the client (Farber, 2006). Again, Stern, Piaget, and others have observed healthy
mothers actively playing with their children, and many people vividly remember those special moments when their
parents played with them. How would making the therapist a co-player in the therapeutic dialogue significantly alter
the distribution of authority between client and therapist?
Certainly, Armstrong's and Parker's innovations altered the nature of authority within music: rather than author-
ity being invested in the score, to which musicians were challenged to bring to life through their talent, swing and
bebop musicians essentially played their own music simultaneously with the score. In jazz, attention is redirected to
the improvisational variations being introduced in the moment by the soloist, in addition to the ongoing flow of the
score, thus creating a dialogue, a relationship, which becomes the center of attention. Modern classical music utilizes
scripted dissonance; in jazz, it is spontaneous, unpredicted.
Authority is an expression of the frame or scaffolding of an experience, with the boundaries of this frame being
determined by its center. The center of the frame does not move. Power is associated with proximity to the center and
degree of movement around the center. Jacques Derrida (1966) comments:

“By orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the play of its elements
inside the total form…. (yet) the center is the point at which the substitution of contents, elements, or terms is no
longer possible.” (p. 278)

Therefore, the center is actually outside the play of the system, just as the leader or authority of a group is in some
sense outside the membership of the group they are the center of. This situation describes well the nature of authority
within a psychotherapy session, even one that is client centered. Derrida describes the important dislocation and decen-
tering that occurs when the center is abandoned and one is thrown into play, being “a field of infinite substitutions”
unrestricted by an immovable center.
Psychotherapy can be theory centered, in which clients orient themselves to the frame of the therapist's interven-
tions, or person centered, in which therapists orient themselves within the client's frame. A jazz-based psychotherapy
will eschew centering the work in either therapist or client, but in the space between, thus decentering (and destabiliz-
ing) the work. From the division between You and I emerges a third space in-between, Us.
258 JOHNSON

A moment in psychotherapy where such decentering occurs is when the therapist and client choose to step back
and discuss how their relationship has been going, presumably with the understanding that neither one can claim to be
the authority on this topic. Here, the therapist must give up to some degree their position as container or frame and
subject themselves to the scrutiny of the client, as an object within the subjectivity of the client. These moments can be
challenging to therapists, especially when the client makes reasonably accurate and critical observations of the thera-
pist's behavior. Though apology, self-reflective criticism, acknowledgment of error, and embarrassment are normal and
authentic human reactions, psychotherapists often have difficulty expressing them openly. A therapist may fear that
acknowledgment of these common feelings will somehow undermine his or her authority as a healing professional to
whom the client has sought help, by revealing vulnerability. Indeed, the fundamental contract between therapist and
client–that something is wrong with the client and that he or she must seek and pay for a professional to improve this
condition–creates a basis for an unequal distribution of authority. The therapist is given privileges by society to care
for and take responsibility for clients, which establishes the basis for this division of power. This contractual arrange-
ment may be a limiting factor in applying a jazz paradigm to psychotherapy, for in jazz the conversation is not based on
a notion that something is wrong that must be fixed. If anything, jazz takes music that is well formed and distorts it with
the unique feelings of the participants (remember how critics first thought jazz ruined the music).
Many other accepted forms of contractual teaching allow for more engaged challenging from the thera-
pist/facilitator. For example, in martial arts training, sports, and the field of professional coaching, the guide partici-
pates initially with interventions that match the capacities of the client, and then gradually increases the discrepancy,
the challenge, and the need to accommodate. In this way, the client learns new and more effective adaptive behaviors.
In karate, at the end of the training, the master attacks the student! The model for the psychotherapist seems built
from different principles.
Certain clients, particularly those with diagnoses of borderline personality disorder, call for the level of interaction
one might imagine from a jazz-based psychotherapy. These clients’ skills in noticing and responding to minute signs of
discrepant communication from therapists are well honed. They will often be uninhibited about pointing out deficits
in the therapist's technique, personality, fashion, and behaviors. The therapy will rarely be at rest. Weaving between
past and present faster than a bebop riff, the therapist will be asked to do one thing (“send me to the hospital”) with the
simultaneous threat of another (“and if you do it means you cannot handle me and want to get rid of me”), only here
there is not a joyful awareness of the complexity of desire, but a linear and fragmented progression of one feeling state
and then the other. The secure attachment of the benign holding environment, with the client speaking at length and
the therapist nodding and making occasional validating or interpretive comments, is absent. Nowhere are the skills of a
jazz improviser more required than in the psychotherapy of these clients! Remaining comfortable while being pushed
off balance, not fearing the client's state of imbalance, and constantly reminding oneself and the client of the underlying
beat and tune set by the therapeutic goals are essential skills for the therapist. Marsha Linehan (1993) comments,

“(Borderline patients) require the ability to let go freely of a position that was formerly clung to tenaciously. If
centeredness is keeping one's feet on the ground, flexibility is moving your shoulders to the side to let the patient
by. Flexibility is that quality of the therapist that is light, responsive, and creative. Dialectically, it is the ability to
change the boundaries of the problem, finding and including what has been previously excluded.” (p. 110)

Thus, a jazz-based psychotherapy is likely to require a re-distribution of authority involving a process of relational
de-centering. The therapist will be required to act and accept responsibility for his or her actions under conditions of
heightened mutuality and vulnerability.

5 A JAZZ PARADIGM WILL BRING MORE LIFE INTO

THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC ENCOUNTER

The reason to explore the possibility of a psychotherapy aligned with modernist and jazz impulses is to seek greater
vitality and dimensionality in the therapeutic encounter. To do this will be to embrace a greater sense of risk, allow more
JOHNSON 259

moments of surprise, and tolerate greater uncertainty, not just for the client, but more critically for the therapist. Jazz is
not a one-way communication. Thus, a different attitude toward self-disclosure, toward error, toward imbalance will be
required. Perhaps not more self-disclosure, error, or imbalance, but more therapist involvement and responsiveness in
the therapeutic dialogue. The general consensus that too much therapist activity suggests a deficit in listening may have
to be re-examined, for activity based on close listening, as in jazz, may not have to interfere in the therapeutic process.
All this must be grounded in a mutual understanding of the process and the client's consent. The empowerment of the
client in the therapeutic encounter may be the critical element that allows or even forces the therapist to play off the
beat. That will only be successful if, like Louis Armstrong, the therapist continues to know where the beat is.
I know that psychotherapy is not music. No one, including myself, will ever put a recording of a therapy session on
their Playlist, nor ask a DJ to play it to get people up on the dance floor. In the midst of a turbulent and digital world, with
books and woods and private conversations being dematerialized, psychotherapy remains a place of quiet comfort, of
natural pause, shared with another thoughtful person. Even if this sentiment derives from another time, another era,
it will always speak to an intrinsic human need. Though Armstrong and Parker, Picasso and Mondrian, Duncan and
Graham, Artaud and Grotowski had to let go of this sentiment in order for their art forms to forge ahead, psychotherapy
does not necessarily have to follow the same path.
On the other hand, the revolutions that occurred within Art have brought more life, energy, and play into these
forms, and it may be worthwhile to re-examine the project of psychotherapy in light of these ideas. Once upon a time
psychotherapy was part of the leading edge of innovation, breaking new ground in the fields of healing, science, and
ethics. Psychoanalysis exposed sexuality; person-centered psychotherapy confronted clients with the barriers to their
authentic selves; and encounter and support groups stimulated the civil rights, women's, veterans’, and gay movements’
efforts toward empowerment and social change. Paradoxically, the success and expansion of psychotherapy may have
led to its joining the cultural conserve, that stable background frame helping people hold on in the midst of an insecure
and rapidly changing world. The innovators showed great courage to break with the traditions, to play off the beat.
They were accused of ruining a beautiful thing. Instead, they were searching for a new form of beauty and found it.
That search should never end.

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How to cite this article: Johnson DR. Playing off the beat: Applying the jazz paradigm to psychotherapy. J Clin
Psychol. 2018;74:249–260. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22579