Being Human in a Different Way: Using Shared Musical Improvision to Enhance Agency in Schizophrenia

This paper explores musical improvisation as a recoverysupportive intervention for individuals with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Using phenomenological and enactivist theories of agency, it examines how shared musical engagement can foster trust, resonance, aesthetic distance, perceptual presence, and a renewed sense of agency despite disruptions in self-experience. Through case studies of two participants in improvisational music groups, the paper shows how structured interactions create empathic, 'anti-anxiety' spaces that promote social connectedness and existential empowerment. Our findings suggest that arts-based interventions can serve as relational 'empathic spaces' that mitigate disturbances in self and other experience — challenges central to schizophrenia — supporting personal recovery beyond symptom reduction. This approach highlights the role of embodied, participatory processes in fostering resilience and well-being, emphasizing the need for further research to systematically evaluate and expand arts-informed mental health care.