The Relationship Between Music Therapy and Theories of Psychotherapy

Abstract

For the most part, the music therapist’s work has been based on adapting musical activities to the needs of clients and interacting with them in the most helpful and sensitive way possible. Ther apists from the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology, on the other hand, have generally been trained to base their practices on the theories of at least one school of psychotherapy. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the benefits for music therapists of using one or more psychotherapeutic theories as a frame of reference for their work, and to review some representative theories of psychotherapy and their possible ap plications to music therapy. To serve this purpose, a number of theories and their possible relationships to music therapy are covered fairly superficially; it is hoped that this will stimulate more intensive exploration of the relationship of the individual theories to music therapy