Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

|History| |Education| |Clinical Practice| |Research| |Professional Status| |References|

History

Austria was one of the pioneering countries for music therapy in Europe and is one of the countries that have a long music therapy tradition. The training course in Vienna was founded in 1959, making this education programme the first on the European continent. Vienna seems to be a logical place for the development of music therapy, as it is famous both for its rich music tradition and for having been the cradle of psychotherapy. This is still reflected in current Austrian music therapy training and practice. Compared to other places, the entrance test for the music therapy training in Vienna is quite much focused on classical musical skills, and the training itself puts a strong emphasis on the self-experience of trainees (Maranto, 1993).

Education

Although Austria has seen a few other training courses come and go, the training at the Music University of Vienna (http://www.mdw.ac.at/) remains the most prominent education. Over the last 44 years it has grown from a short "Lehrgang" in 1959 to a full academic training with a Master-equivalent degree and the possibility of doing a PhD in 2003. (Until now, a PhD training has not been established, but the new University regulations do allow it, and it is expected to be established soon.)

As mentioned above, the training has a strong psychotherapeutic orientation (some country-specific problems with the term "psychotherapeutic" are explained below, under "Professional status"). To the best of the author's knowledge, there is no other public music therapy training in the world that includes as much as 90 hours of individual self-experience and 180 hours of group self-experience, in addition to several other seminars with partly self-experience character. Traditionally, the theoretical orientation was psychoanalytic/psychodynamic, but recent years have seen an increasing integration of other, mainly humanistic psychotherapy models (e.g., from Gestalt therapy).

The founder of the music therapy training in Vienna was Alfred Schmoelz. His most well-known contribution to music therapy technique is the "Partnerspiel" (partner play), where two players improvise together on the same instrument (Schmoelz, 1982; 1987). Schmoelz's definition of music therapy is given in Bruscia (1998, p. 275). Schmoelz led the training until 1992 (European Music Therapy Confederation, 2003).

Clinical Practice

The Austrian professional association of music therapists lists the following areas of clinical practice: people with learning disabilities, people with psychiatric disorders, children and adolescents with behaviour problems, people with neurotic or psychosomatic disorders, elderly people, and patients in neurological rehabilitation. In these fields, music therapy has been applied regularly and/or over an extended period of time, and music therapy could be seen as relatively "established". Music therapy has also been applied in other fields, such as alcohol and drug addiction, forensic psychiatry, nursing homes, and child oncology. The association suggests a future expansion of music therapy into risk pregnancy, neonatology, preventive care and palliative care (Oesterreichischer Berufsverband der MusiktherapeutInnen, 2002).

Research

Traditionally there has not been much empirical research on music therapy in Austria, apart from the work that is done for diploma theses. Recently, however, there has been an increasing interest in research, and Austrian music therapists are increasingly present at national and international conferences on music therapy and psychotherapy.

The author of this overview has done empirical research on the efficacy and effectiveness of music therapy in the field of psychiatry as part of his PhD training in music therapy at Aalborg University. A meta-analysis that shows the positive effects of music therapy in this field has been accepted for publication in the leading international child psychology and psychiatry journal (Gold et al., in press).

To the author's knowledge, there are three other Austrian music therapists who have also done doctoral level research: Dorothea Oberegelsbacher has done an investigation into music therapy with a disabled adult for her doctorate degree in psychology at Vienna University, and has recently done research on the working factors of music therapy with psychosomatic patients. Elena Fitzthum has done historical research on the roots of Austrian music therapy before 1959, and Dorothee Storz has developed a model for focused short-term music therapy in psychiatry (both did this as part of their doctoral training in musicology at the Music University Hamburg).

Professional Status

The professional interests of music therapists in Austria are represented by the Oesterreichischer Berufsverband der MusiktherapeutInnen (OeBM) (http://free.pages.at/oebm/). One of this association's primary goals is to establish a legislative basis for the professional work of music therapists, in the hopes of thereby enabling refunding for music therapy by public health insurance. At the moment, out-patient music therapy in private practice is usually not refundable for patients.

An Austrian peculiarity is its relatively comprehensive psychotherapy law, which was established in 1991. Among other things, this law also defines what approaches are or are not allowed to carry the label "psychotherapy", and although this law is considered relatively wide and generous and includes many more psychotherapy models than in most other countries, music therapy is not one of them. For music therapists, this creates the problem that although they see their work as having a psychotherapeutic orientation, they are not allowed to give it that name, which sometimes causes confusion in the communication with others.

There may be several reasons for music therapy having failed to be included in this law. One argument that has been used in the past is the lack of a consistent "Menschenbild" (which in this context means a consistent concept of human development, health, and pathology). It could also be that not all music therapy is conceived as psychotherapeutic, which may have created the unresolved dilemma of whether to strive for an own music therapy law or for inclusion in the psychotherapy law. The sparseness of empirical evidence does not seem to be the reason, as other models with less empirical evidence were included. But perhaps the Austrian music therapists just didn't sit at the right "Kaffeehaustisch" (Viennese coffee house table) in the 1980s when the law was negotiated.

(Additional note: It should be mentioned that music therapy was in fact included in the Austrian psychotherapy law as a "source profession" ("Quellenberuf"). That means that while music therapy itself was not recognised as a form of psychotherapy, the music therapy training was included as one possible starting point for a training in psychotherapy. This was seen as a great achievement by the OeBM. Since the music therapy training was still developing, this solution probably was the best that could be achieved by that time. The author thanks Regina Halmer-Stein, Austrian EMTC representative, for pointing this out.)

Positively speaking, there is still room for future development, and some of the latest developments give hope that the psychotherapy/non-psychotherapy dilemma can be overcome in a constructive way: A recent draft from the Music University outlines the future of music therapy training in Austria as a non-psychotherapy training at master level which may be followed by a post-graduate music psychotherapy training.

References

Bruscia, Kenneth E. (1998). Defining Music Therapy (2nd ed.). Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.

European Music Therapy Confederation (2003). European Music Therapy Confederation: Austria. [online]. Retrieved November 9, 2003, from http://www.musictherapyworld.net/modules/emtc/austria/emtclist.php

Gold, Christian, Voracek, Martin, & Wigram, Tony (in press). Effects of Music Therapy for Children and Adolescents With Psychopathology: A Meta-analysis. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines. Preprint available from: http://www.geocities.com/chr_gold/.

Halmer-Stein, Regina, Schmoelz, Alfred, Oberegelsbacher, Dorothea, and Gathmann, Peter (1993). Music Therapy in Austria. In: Maranto, Cheryl D. (Ed.). Music therapy: International perspectives. Pipersville: Jeffrey.

Oesterreichischer Berufsverband der MusiktherapeutInnen (2002). Berufsbild Musiktherapie. [online]. Retrieved November 9, 2003, from http://free.pages.at/oebm/berufsbild.htm

Schmoelz, Alfred (1982). Wiener Schule der integrierten Musiktherapie. Musiktherapeutische Umschau, Vol. 3, no 3, pp. 299-307.

Schmoelz, Alfred (1987). Die Wiener Schule der Musiktherapie. Musiktherapeutische Umschau, Vol. 8, no 3, pp. 242-258.

How to cite this page

Gold, Christian (2003). Music Therapy in Austria. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 10, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=country-of-the-month/2003-music-therapy-austria