Music Therapy as a Choice for Psychotherapeutic Intervention: A Preliminary Study of Motivational Factors Among Adult Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

This paper is the result of a preliminary study of a sample of fifty non-institutionalized adult psychiatric patients referred to Creative Arts Rehabilitation Center for individual music therapy sessions. The sample is drawn from among those clients seen regularly by the author at the Center for a minimum of three years. All of these have been referred by primary psychiatrists, neurologists, psychologists or psychotherapists with whom they were/are in concurrent treatment. Each patient expressed a desire to learn to ring, to compose, or to play a musical instrument. The patient's conscious motivation toward the treatment modality is set forth. The study also attempts to identify unconscious and symbolic elements in the patient's life and music behaviors which predispose the individual not only toward music therapy but to music itself. Sections on “Music: Tool for Survival,” “Music in Everyday Life,” “The Relation to Ego Development,” “The Relation to Sound, Speech, and Language,” and “Symbolic Music-Related Behaviors,” highlight the contribution of music to mankind's struggle to survive and master reality—in primitive times as well as today.