Music Therapy in Action: A Case Study of a Brain-Damaged Teenager

Abstract

Introduction The founder of Music Therapy, Dr. E. Thayer Gaston, was originally set for a career in medicine. The Depression Years changed those plans and though he became Professor of Music Education, medicine and psychiatry continued to intrigue him. With close medical friends like Menninger, Maslow and Masserman, he had the advice and support of his medical colleagues to initiate the first Music Therapy programme at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. There he was Director of Music Therapy and the research, conducted by his doctoral students in the fifties, soon took a foot hold in the professional fields at psychiatric settings and in Special Schools for Handicapped Children.