Performance in Music Therapy: Experiences in Five Dimensions

Abstract

Constructing a procedure to assess, evaluate and treat psychopathology as it relates to the process of performing music addresses a link that is missing in contemporary music therapy practice and research. Conversely, no current explanation exists on how performing music can consistently promote health and human wellbeing. This article attempts to do both. It will apply the research findings of a study conducted with ten adult mental health consumers in 2004 and examine how the procedures developed in that study were then employed in a music psychotherapy group conducted over the course of a two and a half year period. That group process yielded a textured description of the meaning that performing held for the participants and how their relationship to performing music changed their lives. The data will then be interpreted through a system of analysis that examines the performance process through a five dimensional system. A case study will be presented to illustrate this process.