About
395
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Introduction
Dianna Theadora Kenny PhD was a member of staff at The University of Sydney for 31 years. She retired with the title of Professor of Psychology and Professor of Music.
Dianna continues to undertake research and clinical practice in developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology, psychoanalysis, behavioural science and music psychology. Her current projects include gender dysphoria in children and adolescents and music performance anxiety.
Additional affiliations
January 1988 - July 2019
Education
January 1980 - December 1987
Publications
Publications (395)
This unique, comprehensive book on the global child and adolescent transgender crisis highlights the fallacies of gender ideology and explains why social contagion is a major factor in the upsurge of young people wishing to transition. It underscores for the first time how social contagion also influences the many professions involved in treatment...
Background
Mental health services are available for young people involved with the criminal justice system. However, they have unmet mental health needs after the expiration of criminal justice supervision.
Objective
To determine the incidence rate and identify predictors of psychiatric hospitalisations within 24 months after the expiration of cri...
I commenced my academic exploration of music performance anxiety in a study with opera chorus artists from Opera Australia in 2004. I subsequently postulated a new theory of the aetiology of music performance anxiety and began the development of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI) to assess the hypothesized theoretical constructs...
This presentation distils my research into music performance anxiety (MPA) into accessible text and concepts for all musicians, which will hopefully be helpful to musicians struggling to harness their MPA to enhance their musical performances.
Psychological management of young people with gender dysphoria and aspirations to transition
Many resources are available to "assist" parents and teachers to "educate" children about the concepts of sex and gender 1 according to current gender ideology. Perusal of teaching materials on gender that are readily available on the Internet generally reveals that human anatomy and biologically based sexual dimorphism have been abandoned in favou...
Gender development is a complex process; it involves an interplay of genes, gonadal hormones, cognitive, language, and socioemotional development, the child's socialization history, and culture. Gender identity includes: (i) the individual's conviction that s/he is male or female; and (ii) a social sex-role, which is the enactment of socially and c...
In the Booker prize winning book, Shuggie Bain, author, Douglas Stuart, describes his experience growing up "not like a normal boy" in the unforgiving slums of East Glasgow in Thatcher's 1980s. As he slowly awakens to the reality that he is not like other boys, "[h]e… tried to find something masculine to admire about himself: the black curls, the m...
Two case reports of couples with unresolved grief who received a short-term psychoanalytically oriented intervention for couples are presented. The sixteenweek intervention is based on the unresolved grief triad (UGT) which links empirically based predictors of prolonged or complicated grief, including a history of unmourned losses and couple dynam...
This publication is a compilation of articles and submissions made by a number of Australian professionals concerning the transgendering of children and adolescents. They come from a variety of professional backgrounds, including paediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, the law, history, parenting, women’s sports and sociology. They raise questions abo...
A collection of papers from psychology, sociology, law, medicine, education and parents of transgender-declaring young people. We aim is to restore academic debate to an issue that has become ideological rather than empirical/scientific and which is destroying the lives of children, adolescents and their families.
Individuals with social phobia report lower quality of life, poorer social functioning and lower achievement. Young
women are more likely to experience anxiety than other demographic groups. Using bidirectional associations
and a path model, this study examined the interrelationship between social phobia and trait anxiety, perfectionism
and self-ef...
Did God create man or did man create God? In this book, Dianna Kenny examines religious belief through a variety of perspectives – psychoanalytic, cognitive, neuropsychological, sociological, historical and psychiatric – to provide a coherent account of why people might believe in God. She argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a fertile and cr...
Examines trends in gender dysphoria and its treatment in young people in Australia between 2014 and 2019
Ukrainian translation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI)
Gender dysphoria in children and young people has become a significant health and welfare issue over the past 20 years as increasing numbers of young people declare themselves transgender and demand gender affirmation treatment, an experimental process involving social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and mutilating surgery. Sadly,...
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) included a question on gender diversity for the first time in the 2016 Census. It reported that 1,260 people in Australia identified as “sex and/or gender diverse.” Of this tiny proportion of the Australian population, 35% of sex/gender diverse people indicated they were non-binary (17%) or a gender other t...
In this article, I address key issues in the transgender debate as they pertain to children and young people. These include: Are “gender transition treatments” safe, “curative” and in the child’s best interest? In considering these questions, I explore the known negative consequences of puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones, including infertil...
This paper is a first attempt to systematize the numbers of children and young people who are seeking treatment for gender dysphoria from one of the four gender clinics in Australia. The figures presented here are an underestimate of the number of children and young people asserting that they are gender dysphoric because they only report on four of...
Provides a brief explanation of unconscious personality processes
In this article, I explore two epistemologies for theorizing infancy and treating autism—infant and child psychoanalysis expounded by Frances Tustin and colleagues and developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience. I address two main issues: (a) how early psychoanalytic insights informed empirical developments and theoretical scholarship...
Music performance anxiety (MPA) can end the musical aspirations of even the most talented and dedicated musician. Mastering MPA can be almost as challenging as the most difficult concerto or operatic role. Yet there are currently very few evidence-based treatments for this potentially debilitating conditions. In this book, Dianna Kenny synthesizes...
Primary objective: To identify correlates of past traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a population of young offenders.
Research design: Cross-sectional analyses were conducted on available data from a sample derived from the NSW Young People on Community Orders Health Survey.
Procedures: Study participants were administered questionnaires to collect hi...
Although music performance anxiety (MPA) is a common problem, there are only a few studies on this subject in Hungary. In this article, we investigate the underlying socio-demographic and psychological factors related to music performance anxiety. The sample consisted of musicians (N = 100; aged between 15–35 years) who were studying or had complet...
The main objective of this study was to analyse the psychometric properties of the Polish adaptation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory- Revised (K-MPAI-R, Kenny, 2009) modified as the Kenny Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-PAI) for a a general population of individuals with experience in public performance in fields other than music...
This paper investigates attachment themes in the life history narratives of professional orchestral musicians and their relationship with music performance anxiety (MPA). Narrative accounts derived from open-ended in-depth interviews of ten professional musicians were analysed from an attachment perspective using content and thematic analysis. We h...
This research investigated whether music performance anxiety (MPA) can be theoretically understood as a unidimensional construct, and whether the factorial structure is robust across different populations of musicians with different levels of expertise. K-MPAI scores were obtained from 455 Peruvian tertiary music students (mean age = 21.19 years, S...
Abstract: BACKGROUND: The physical and psychological demands of playing a musical instrument are likely to be affected by age-related decline in function, including physical, cognitive, psychological, and organ-related changes. However, the complex neurophysiological demands of playing a musical instrument may delay many normal aging-related change...
In the past 20 years, the progressive uncovering of child sexual abuse in institutional settings has reverberated across the globe with simultaneous investigations across Europe and the English-speaking world. However, most books on child sexual abuse are narrowly focused and do not situate this most distressing of human behaviours within a social...
This is a certified Turkish translation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for use with Turkish-speaking musicians
Much of the literature on stressful workplaces, occupationally inspired psychological crises and critical incidents has focused on the dangerous or human service professions such as the military, policing, fire-fighting, emergency work, nursing and teaching. Few of us would count among these stressful occupations classical or popular music, or cons...
This books presents current theory and assessment of music performance anxiety, the role of anxious attachment in the etiology of severe music performance anxiety and a series of case studies that present the process of therapy for severely performance anxious musicians.
Questionnaire to obtain employers’ perspectives on the workers’ compensation and return to work system
Survey of injured workers who had experienced a workplace injury regarding their experiences with employers, insurers, rehabilitation providers and the workers’ compensation system
Pročitajte slijedeće tvrdnje o tome kako se općenito osjećate i kako se osjećate prije ili tijekom javnog nastupa. Zaokružite broj koji najbolje opisuje u kojoj mjeri se slažete ili ne slažete sa svakom od navedenih tvrdnji.
Níže je uvedeno několik tvrzení, o tom jak se obecně cítíte a jak se cítíte před nebo během vystoupení. Zakroužkujte prosím číslo, které nejlépe vyjadřuje, v jaké míře souhlasíte či nesouhlasíte s každým uvedeným výrokem.
This article examines how institutional characteristics have enabled the institutional sexual abuse of children,
drawing on the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
This study presents the development, administration and evaluation of two brief group interventions for music performance anxiety (MPA) aimed at reducing anxiety and improving performance quality. A cognitive behavioural therapy intervention was developed based on an existing empirically-supported treatment Chilled (Rapee et al., 2006), focusing on...
Examines the characteristics of the adolescent male changing voice
This study assessed music performance anxiety (MPA) in ensemble rehearsals and concerts in 274 undergraduate non-music and music majors drawn from 10 Mid-Atlantic institutions in the USA to examine the prevalence and experience of MPA in non-music major undergraduates and to determine whether MPA severity differed between non-music majors and music...
Psychoanalysis is simultaneously a theory of how the mind functions, a research method for studying the contents of the mind, and a therapy for modifying those contents to make them more adaptive and conducive to a happy, fulfilling life. Psychoanalysis emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes, conflict, defenses, and hidden meanin...
Certified Portuguese translation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory
Recent studies have highlighted the disturbing morbidity and early mortality of popular musicians. Most of the studies have focused on male musicians because, until recently, there were relatively few female popular musicians on which to base a population study. With the sharp increase in female popular musicians from fewer than 2% in the 1950s to...
Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory - Certified Hungarian translation
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety in Italian musicians
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety
Validated questionnaire to assess music performance anxiety
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety in Indonesian musicians
Validated questionnaire to assess music performance anxiety
Validated questionnaire for the assessment of music performance anxiety
Because of the early age (3-5 years) at which most professional musicians commence their musical training and the intensity and duration of that training, many of the difficulties experienced as mature and older musicians have their beginnings in these developmental years, often as a result of faulty training or over-training. Musicians' skills app...
Background: Kenny has proposed that severe music performance anxiety that is unresponsive to usual treatments such as cognitive-behaviour therapy may be one manifestation of unresolved attachment ruptures in early life. Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy specifically targets early relationship trauma. Accordingly, a trial of Intensive Short...
Background:
Cystic fibrosis is a genetically inherited, life-threatening condition that affects major organs. The management of cystic fibrosis involves a multi-faceted daily treatment regimen that includes airway clearance techniques, pancreatic enzymes and other medications. Previous studies have found that compliance with this intensive treatme...
Psychoanalysis has had a long gestation, during the course of which it has experienced multiple rebirths, leading some current authors to complain that there has been such a proliferation of theories of psychoanalysis over the past 115 years that the field has become theoretically fragmented and is in disarray (Fonagy & Target, 2003; Rangell, 2006)...
Most people experience performance anxiety (PA) at some time in a range of diverse endeavours. However,
for those in careers related to the performing arts (music, theatre and dance), public speaking, or sport, it can be a career-limiting or career-ending experience. Little attention has been paid to performance anxiety, empirically, diagnostically...
This article discusses the many complex factors that influence the development of the human brain, highlighting specific aspects during adolescence, how risks to brain development and function affect the behaviour and maturity of adolescents, and implications for those young people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
Validated inventory to assess music performance anxiety and the scoring protocol to assist assessment and treatment planning
Bullying is a major problem in schools and workplaces that has not been adequately addressed by policymakers, teachers, employers, managers or legislators. This position paper offers a research-informed approach that may assist those who are concerned with bullying.
Introduction:
Typically, Australian orchestral musicians perform on stage, in an orchestra pit, or in a combination of both workplaces. This study explored a range of physical and mental health indicators in musicians who played in these different orchestra types to ascertain whether orchestra environment was a risk factor affecting musician wellb...
Does a combination of lifestyle pressures and personality, as reflected in genre, lead to the early death of popular musicians? We explored overall mortality, cause of death, and changes in patterns of death over time and by music genre membership in popular musicians who died between 1950 and 2014. The death records of 13,195 popular musicians wer...
Childhood maltreatment has diverse, lifelong impact on morbidity and mortality. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) is one of the most commonly used scales to assess and quantify these experiences and their impact. Curiously, despite very widespread use of the CTQ, scores on its Minimization-Denial (MD) subscale-originally designed to assess a...
This Excel spreadsheet that contains the pooled, raw, data from all of the collaborating investigators.
This has been submitted at the request of the publishing entity, so that other researchers may also have access to the dataset used in our analyses.
(CSV)
Samples included in the analysis.
This table lists all of the data sets used for this research by primary investigator, providing the: number of community members in their sample; number of clinical patients used in their sample (alongside the type of clinical sample used); the language used by that research group; and a reference to where else the...
In a population of dead musicians spanning seven decades from 1950 to 2010, for which an accurate age of death could be identified (n=11,054), 1.2% (n=128) died at 26, 1.4% (n=153) died at 28 and 1.3% (n=144) died at 27. Age 56 had the highest frequency of deaths (2.2%; n=239). So how did the notion of the 27 Club develop? This paper explores this...
By virtue of its reliability and convergent validity with clinical tests of anxiety and depression, the K-MPAI (Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory) has the potential to identify performers who have a clinically significant level of music performance anxiety who may benefit from clinical intervention. In order to identify these musicians, cli...
Explores the morbidity and mortality of popular musicians, exploring the impact of era, gender and genre on mortality patterns. Mortality rates are twice as high as for the population as a whole over the whole range.
The aim of this paper was to contribute to the further development of a coherent theory of music performance anxiety (MPA). Kenny (2011) proposed three forms of MPA – focal, MPA with social anxiety, and MPA with panic and depression. An attachment disorder was proposed as the underlying psychopathology for this third type of MPA. Accordingly, an op...
This article explores the use of collaborative practice as an alternative to court in resolving parenting disputes that involve misattributed paternity. This process enables the parties to retain their legal rights to seek compensation for any financial losses, determine future child support and parenting arrangements and address any psychological...
