On Aug 1, 2005, at 11:15 AM, Phil Daley wrote:
At 8/1/2005 10:26 AM, John Howell wrote:
>(Of course I still don't understand what "music therapy" is or what "music therapists" do!)
Oh, that brings up a long forgotten assignment in a grad school Writing Techniques class wherein I had to write a short treatise on "Music Therapy", you know, complete with research notes, bibliography, etc, etc, etc.
My conclusion - total malarkey ;-)
My wife is a nurse practitioner at the local VA nursing home, wh. offers a variety of adjuvant therapies including music therapy. The point of music therapy is to use music to help people with neurological problems to focus and find workarounds for their condition. Music, for example, is a tremendous help in memorizing words--all of us know that a poem is much easier to remember when it is sung. So people with stutters or word-finding difficulties can be and are helped by using musical mnemonics to get around the places they get stuck. Similarly, music can help with coordinating motions, retrieving memories, and so on.
That's what music therapy is, and does. It has a long, long history, and it works. A lot of us have a visceral negative reaction to the sight of a bunch of gorked-out elders vaguely trying to get through Mary Had a Little Lamb--but the fact is that this stuff helps them. The point is good medicine, not good music.
Oliver Sacks, BTW, has written memorably on the power of music to help neurological patients, though he doesn't use the term "music therapy." There's a particularly good discussion in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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