music, therapy, and me

What is music therapy? When you really start to think about that question, you find that there are any number of answers to what appears to be an easy conversation starter. In the almost 19 years that I have proudly worn the title of Music Therapist-Board Certified, I have pondered this particular question many, MANY times. I have never really come up with one answer to this question. Music therapy treatment is often only linked by the fact that there is a client, a therapist, and music present. A music therapy session led by me, using music common to many of my clients, will be completely changed by the client present. In addition, the therapeutic process is changed by things I bring into the session, things that the client brings into the session, and by the music itself. It is interesting, isn't it? How do you define something that exists in a moment? How do you define something that changes all the time? I think this is one of the fundamental difficulties of music the...

Narrow-minds and Ethics So, I have got myself into some trouble with the music therapy listserve again. I seem to do that quite a bit when I open my big fat mouth. I hate when people with opposing OPINIONS start to argue with each other. There is never a winner, especially when the opinions are contentious to begin with. The music therapy listserve has been abuzz with comments about a book featuring a music therapist as the protagonist. The book also concerns a lesbian relationship, something that was not highlighted before the book was published. One MT asked for some opinions about the book, and another MT stated that she felt that marriage should be between one man and one woman, not a lesbian couple. This opened up the floodgates for calls to remand this MT under the code of ethics. She was told to seek supervision to assist her in removing her bias towards people who were in homosexual relationships. I decided that some of these conversations were appropriate, but I started ...

Bickering with the Rest of the Music Therapy World Well, the music therapy world is rocking with a discussion about listserve etiquette this weekend! It amazes me who chimes in on certain topics. At issue this time is long messages clogging up the mailboxes of certain therapists. There was an initial request for folks to delete the earlier emails when responding. This led to a series of requests from others to: keep little comments from the entire list stop using the list to elicit activity ideas (proffered by one of the "holier-than-thou") use the blog and to just delete things I started to laugh. There is something funny about how we can take these comments from one another so very seriously. In addition, it just reinforces the current attitude of my generation which consists of "it's all about me." Damn the consequences for someone else - I want things my way or no way!! What is going on in the world these days?? I just laugh at the absurdity of u...