Talking about Music Therapy: The Challenge
“What is Music Therapy?”
This is a question I am always happy to hear, but never ready to answer.
Through my study and placement I always feel slightly overwhelmed, tangled in thought, imposterised and stuck with where to start when explaining Music Therapy.
I could start with the history of Music Therapy, how it emerged in the 1940’s as a pioneering treatment for world war two soldiers in America experiencing PTSD. I could then describe all the different parts of a persons wellbeing (social, emotional, physical, spiritual, mental) music influences and how it is now used in the treatment for a range of conditions.
I always feel compelled to emphasise the neuroscience, the randomised control trials and Cochrane reviews (A gold standard platform for displaying peer reviewed results from meta-analyses on health conditions and interventions) that ‘prove’ music is therapeutic. The ever growing pool of evidence based research that shows how music-based interventions improve mental wellbeing of people with Dementia (Van der steen, et al., 2018), increase the quality of life for young people with autism (Geretsegger, et al., 2022) alleviate cravings and increase motivation in people receiving rehabilitation for substance use disorders (Ghetti, 2022), to name just a few.
In focussing on the positivist, objective research though I obscure the subjective qualities of what drew me to music therapy; the magic in the music.
My first real insight into what happens in the music therapy space was introduced through art. The first reading my class was assigned in our training was a selection of poetry that practicing music therapists had created in response to their work (excerpt below). For the first time, music therapy was a tangible process, a compassionate attention to the needs of another human being explored and articulated together in music and reflection.
Excerpt from A collection of poems titled: ‘six of the many understandings that music therapy journeys gave me’ by Carolyn Ayson from the book: Tales of the Music Therapy room (2018).
Since engaging with art in this way to understand something that can’t be concisely pinned down by one scientific definition, my own understanding of music therapy has continued to be a felt experience where I feel increasingly comfortable not relying on words for reassurance. This is perhaps the origin of the incongruence I feel when asked to explain it.
Music therapy is more and more something I feel in the quality of interactions with participants. During my study, music therapy was something I could sense in classroom discussions responding to case studies, i could feel it when role playing challenges I had encountered in sessions on placement, I encountered music therapy in class improvisations and impromptu singing that would break out during our class shared lunches.
Artists continue to provide me with comfort surrounding the challenge of articulating that which can only be felt. I have recently read ‘On Connection’ by Kae Tempest (they/them) (I recommend to anyone and everyone interested in the importance of creativity in todays world). Tempest is a poet, writer, playwright, lyricist, performer and recording artist from the UK. I found this quote they recited by William Blake particularly profound:
“Unknown, not unpercieved”
This quote captures the nature of why creative arts like music interact with us in a different field of experience that can’t be easily explained, yet is innately felt as something important.
From whatever angle you take, Music Therapy is distinguished from other forms of musical experiences by its addition of the therapeutic relationship.
Qualities of the therapeutic relationship include a fundamental capacity to ‘be with’ a participant exactly as they arrive to sessions, without trying to ‘fix’ their emotions or behaviour. This is also known as having a therapeutic presence. Being fully present and accepting to the feelings, sensations and thoughts that arise in sessions is what communicates to participants ‘it’s safe to be myself here’, from here healing, growth and development emerge. There are many more qualities that I hope to cover in future blog posts.
In Tempest’s book, they explore the nature of connection and the unique role of creativity to access our commonalities as human beings. Creativity encourages connection to the ‘true, uncomfortable self’ (2020. p.4). I find this understanding of creativity resonant with my own journey of healing through engaging with the arts. Music has acted as a safe container for my own expression and transformation. Songwriting has allowed me to meet myself, to reveal to myself what I could not have otherwise known, my repressed feelings of anger, sadness and pain alongside my potential for joy and curiosity. I could experience in music my inner strength to heal and grow.
Now when working with participants I find myself trusting the inherent properties of music that are resonant for people, I see my role as a music therapist is to be sensitive to what is important to the people I work with and attend to their needs in the music and through discussion about the music.
If you were to ask me today ‘what is music therapy?’ I would try my best to quote the most recent edition of the ‘Handbook of Music Therapy’ (Bunt, et al., 2024) which says…
“Music Therapy is the use of sounds and music within an evolving relationship between patient/participant and therapist to support and encourage physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual well-being”
This definition carries an inherent respect for music therapy as a process in its inclusion of the relationship as something ‘evolving’ which resonates with my understanding. Hopefully it’s becoming apparent that descriptions however only scratch the surface of what something like music therapy really is. Maybe a better question to ask is ‘what does music therapy feel like?. Then it would only be a matter of tapping into your own experience of music and the influences it has had on the many facets of your identity and wellbeing. From this space we have all felt music therapy. The only difference is that a music therapist has been trained to understand deeply the processes that music naturally nurtures and pairs this with a commitment to developing an empathetic and attuned relationship between therapist and client that is attentive to individual uniqueness and aspirations. The science to support its use is important but sometimes it is privileged in discusssions on music therapy over qualitative understandings like art.
The artwork that accompanies this writing came from my masters research in which I attempted to portray music therapy as a process that originates from a single source; the ‘therapeutic relationship’ which then ripple and reverberates out through the musical interactions acknowledging the complexity and multidimensionality of people both as individuals and as part of an interdependent network of connections which nurture a felt sense of belonging in the world.
Maybe you just see colourful squiggles and that’s ok too.
References
Bunt L and Stige B. (2014) Music Therapy: An art beyond words. 2nd Ed. Hove, UK: Routlege.
Bunt L, Hoskyns S, Swamy S. (2024) The Handbook of Music Therapy. 2nd Ed. Routledge.
Geretsegger M, Fusar-Poli L, Elefant C, Mössler KA, Vitale G, Gold C. (2022) Music therapy for autistic people. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 5. Art. No.: CD004381. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004381.pub4. Accessed 21 April 2024.
Ghetti C, Chen X-J, Brenner AK, Hakvoort LG, Lien L, Fachner J, Gold C. (2022) Music therapy for people with substance use disorders. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 5. Art. No.: CD012576. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012576.pub3. Accessed 21 April 2024
Tempest K. (2020) On connection. Faber.
Van der Steen JT, Smaling HJA, van der Wouden JC, Bruinsma MS, Scholten RJPM, Vink AC. (2018) Music‐based therapeutic interventions for people with dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 7. Art. No.: CD003477. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003477.pub4. Accessed 21 April 2024.
