Abstract
Music therapy has for a long time been associated with humanistic values, both among music therapists but more and more also among people outside the field. Do we all have a common understanding of what humanistic music therapy is? The point of departure in this paper is the development of a new Norwegian residential care unit for adolescents in child welfare services. Those responsible for this unit have included a music therapist, because they want to base the enterprise and its activities upon the values they associate with music therapy. This paper asks: What is “humanistic music therapy” and how might its perspectives correlate with the visions and ideas of the leaders of a child welfare institution? A literature review will assess the critical understanding of the concept of humanistic music therapy, in order to understand its unbiased and foundational values. Semi-structured interviews with the unit’s initiators will describe their visions and hopes for the development of the care unit with regard to humanistic music therapy. By correlating the findings from the literature review and the interviews, the paper describes aspects that might contribute to a common ground of understanding for the music therapist and the workers in the unit, which in turn might contribute to personal growth and health promotion among the adolescents and their community.
Highlights
The link between notions of music therapy and humanism has been strong for a very long time
We found a substantial number of texts (329) in which the authors claim to have a humanistic perspective on music therapy
We will correlate the findings from the literature review with the interviews with the unit’s leaders, followed by the paper’s research question, which is: What is humanistic music therapy and how might this perspective correlate with the visions and ideas of the leaders of a child welfare institution?
Summary
The link between notions of music therapy and humanism has been strong for a very long time. One of the authors of this paper, Ingeborg Nebelung, has recently been hired as a music therapist of a new child welfare unit in Norway She is working on a PhD project that aims to look at what music therapy as a discipline and methodical approach can provide this particular unit in the planning, start-up, and early years. The project seeks to explore how the adolescents’ participation in music therapy may affect them and the institution as a whole.1 In this paper, this author has acted as the interviewer, and we will refer to her as “the music therapist” in the interviews. Humanism is a world view in which the individual is seen as sovereign—above nature, the state, and sometimes even God. The individual is seen as nondeterministic, meaning that they have free will and are able to grow and mature on their own terms.
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