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Exploring Disability Identity Through Reflexive Songwriting: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry

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Exploring Disability Identity Through Reflexive Songwriting: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry

Switzer, Aspen (2025) Exploring Disability Identity Through Reflexive Songwriting: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

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Abstract

Music therapists have long supported autistic and neurodivergent (ND) individuals, yet support needs are too often defined through deficit-based models rooted in observable behaviours described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Recently, disabled, autistic, and ND music therapists have begun challenging this framing, calling for approaches that reflect the diversity and lived realities of those we serve. Disability experience itself offers crucial insight into how music therapy might better honour neurodivergent ways of being and foster more inclusive care.
This heuristic self-inquiry aimed to contribute to these first-voice perspectives by exploring what insights might emerge when the researcher, a neurodivergent Certified Music Therapist, engaged in reflexive songwriting to claim a disability identity. The study also sought to examine how this process could deepen her understanding of disability and neurodivergence as identity, inform her ability to identify and articulate support needs, and shape her clinical practice.
Data were collected through journaling and reflexive songwriting, guided by Moustakas’ six phases of heuristic self-inquiry, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Three main categories emerged: grappling with expectations, resisting expectations, and the courage to look ahead—each with related subcategories. A creative synthesis took the form of a poem that spoke directly to normativity, imagined as a person or collective entity, through which key findings and a forward-looking vision were articulated.
The thesis concludes with a discussion of implications for practice and the researcher’s reflections on the multilayered value of reflexive songwriting in exploring disability identity.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Creative Arts Therapies
Item Type:Thesis (Masters)
Authors:Switzer, Aspen
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:M.A.
Program:Creative Arts Therapies (Music Therapy)
Date:1 September 2025
Thesis Supervisor(s):Bruce, Cynthia
Keywords:music therapy, neurodiversity, songwriting, disability identity
ID Code:996293
Deposited By: Aspen Switzer
Deposited On:04 Nov 2025 15:18
Last Modified:04 Nov 2025 15:18

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