Five Latest Fortnightly Columns

A Contentious Elephant in the Music Therapy Room: Daring to Consider the Ethics of Religion in Music Therapy Practice
Brian Abrams
13. May 2013

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: Religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." Linus van Pelt, Peanuts

The Problematization of Religion in Music Therapy

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Eleazar the Maccabee and War "Elephant" Carrying Seleucid General, Based Upon Apocryphal Book of 1 Maccabees From Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Anonymous, 14th Century)

During recent years, the United States has experienced an intensification of the discourse on the role of religion and faith-based belief systems in public policy. At the core of this discourse is a fundamental tension between the basic civil rights to freedom of, and freedom from, religion. The discourse itself is nothing new, and it certainly comes as no surprise that such a discourse would arise, in an environment where demographic diversity abounds, including divergent sets of values and worldviews; but it has taken on a distinctly amplified character over the past decade or so, during an era when the US political arena has witnessed the emergence of movements that have challenged past precedent in new ways. This discourse has tended to become controversial, contentious, and even hostile in tone, wherever it has arrived at non-negotiable, fundamental impasses around such challenging issues as religious expression in public education, reproductive rights, marriage equality, and so forth. Further complicating matters are the sometimes subtle politics of privilege that are interwoven into the fabric of these issues. In spite of the great diversity of religious orientations that coexist among members of the US population, not every orientation (including those which are non-religious in character) is endowed with the same degree of public respect and socioeconomic legitimacy. This, in turn, has established multilayered, hegemonic structures that have readily contributed to implicit or explicit glorification of certain orientations and marginalization of others.

In Search of the Golden Mean - Our Way to Music Therapy
Krzysztof Stachyra
29. April 2013

I have a feeling that a lot is happening in the field of music therapy in developing countries which so far in this regard were not on the first place on the list. Through the exchange of information, greater ease of travel and access to the publications more and more people learn what music therapy is, what are the rules, and under what circumstances it can be effective. I have an opportunity to observe this trend in my country, but also in neighboring countries.

To Know or to Not-Know - ….. Some Reflections on a Recent Symposium Held at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Institut für Musiktherapie, Hamburg
Susanne Bauer
15. April 2013

After four weeks I am still nourishing from my visit to Hamburg and therefore want to share some impressions with you. First of all: What a good idea - celebrating one’s big birthday inviting friends and colleagues, sharing food, wine, information and emotion during a whole day. This was what happened on Eckhard Weymann´s birthday-Symposium entitled: “Momente des Nicht-Wissens” or “Moments of Not-knowing”. I wonder who received more gifts, the celebrated or the visitors.

The Cultural Integrity of a Music Therapist in Analytical Music Therapy-Oriented Supervision (AMTOS)
Seung-A Kim
18. March 2013

One of the most important aspects of the Analytical Music Therapy (AMT) (Priestley, 1975; 1994) approach is setting the stage for music therapists undergoing music therapy themselves. In her writings, Mary Priestley (1994) stresses how important it is for therapists to experience music therapy for themselves, as increasing self-awareness is an essential part of music therapy training. This can be achieved by Intertherapy— a training method for analytical music therapists. Therefore, AMT has significant implications in music therapy training. As Priestley (1994) asserts, regardless of one’s chronological age, we have an “inner child” inside of us. She explains how important it is for the therapist to recognize his or her “inner child” when working with a client:

…the knowledge and healing of his inner child through the unfreezing of its traumatized emotion, are an essential part of his inner preparation for work. In this way he will make sure of treating his patient as separate individuals without causing them to express the emotions of his unconscious and projected damaged inner child instead (p. 214).

Do not Believe in Mirages
Diego Schapira
04. March 2013

I remember when, as a child, I saw those films and cartoons in which characters were thirsty in a desert, and the heat made them believe that a few hundred meters away there was an oasis where they could stop their agony. Finally, they dove hopefully and just found more sand. Thus, I learned that the mind could create the illusion of a supposed reality, which might not be as thought. It seems to me that it is one of the situations in which we can incur, if we believe in some of the mirages that these hyper-computerized times (and allegedly hyper-connected time) provide us.