Adlerian Psychology and Music Therapy: The Harmony of Sound and Matter and Community Feeling

Abstract

Music is a language of its own, immanent, with no words, yet precise, based on mathematical ratios and harmonics. Music links people together, yet resonates emotionally with each person individually. Half a century ago Dreikurs wrote, “In music therapy, individual deficiencies, symptoms, and maladjustments are deprived of their stigma” (1953). The principles of musical harmony and resonance described here find their correspondence in the standing waves that make up the electron shells of atoms and molecules that constitute matter. This human resonance in matter provides a theoretical basis for Adler’s concept of Gemeinshaftsgefuhl , “a cosmic feeling, a reflection of the coherence of everything cosmic, which lives in us and which gives us the ability to empathize with things which lie outside our physical body,” (1953) and describes the great scientists and artists in their moments of originality. Modern music therapy is examined in this article and is shown to be a most useful adjunct to conventional psychotherapy as Dreikurs recommended. Adlerian Individual Psychology can provide a natural foundation for the practice of music therapy.