Dear AMTA

Marketing to the Music Therapist

I am in the process of designing products for music therapists, music educators, and others interested in music-enhanced education. I am trying to figure out how to demonstrate my tools and products to music therapists who work with children and adolescents in educational settings. I guess I will try to do some stuff through the listserve.

One of the blessings and disadvantages to being a music therapist is the difficulty in defining our profession. Each of us offers a very different music therapy experience to our clients. This makes things complicated because what I find to be an important tool might not be important to any other music therapist.

So, why are we so very different? I think there is variation because of the nature of music and the nature of each member of the therapeutic experience. I get to change my nature with each set of clients that enter the music therapy room. My music changes as well to accommodate client interests, preferences, and needs.

CHANGE OF SUBJECT!!

I have a real difficulty with people who are of the opinion that their way of practicing music therapy is the best or only way of practicing. I think that the attitude of being right distracts from their primary mission - using music to affect changes in the life of their client. I know that I borrow from different philosophies of music therapy to provide therapy services to my clients. My techniques and interventions change when my clients need different forms of therapy. If I limited myself to only one "right" methodology, I would be short-changing my clients.

Having said all that, I am primarily a behaviorist. I borrow concepts from sensory integration, Nordoff-Robbins (just some of the basic concepts as I am not and will not be trained), Neurologic Music Therapy (which I have been trained to use), cognitive and behavioral psychology. I am good at mood vectoring as well as using the Iso-principle to change the behavior states of my clientele. I am not someone who is trained in psycho-dynamic music therapy techniques, though I have read about the philosophy extensively. I do not pretend to be a psycho-dynamic therapist and will be the first to state that I do not practice in that manner. I do not feel that I am better than those in the p-d camp, even though they definitely appear to think that they are better than me.

Why is that? I wonder. Obviously the rancor between former NAMT and AAMT members has not be alleviated through the merger of the two former associations into the current AMTA. As someone who was a music therapist before and after the merger, I do not understand why there are people in the music therapy world that refuse to talk to me simply because I live in a former NAMT college town.

Seriously!

I have been engaged in conversation with people who stop the conversation when they see that my nametag displays my town. They have said, and I quote, "It's a good thing that I talked to you before I knew where you were from. I wouldn't have listened to you if I had known you were from there." Others look at my tag and walk away. I have been branded as a traitor simply because of my choice of educational program.

I feel strongly that we, as music therapists, will not be able to grow in numbers or professional status until we, as music therapists, are truly united in our desire to use music as a therapeutic tool to help our clients achieve their goals. There shouldn't be strife. There shouldn't be hard feelings for things that went on in the past. We have been one association for twelve years now. There are several generations of professionals who have no idea what the issues were that led to the split or to reunification.

Get over it.

There. That is my tirade for the day.