Visible through an Audible Voice

Abstract

This article describes a music therapy process with a 14-year-old girl I will call Sara, who had ceased talking for some years. Sara was an in-patient at a Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. During nine months of individual music therapy, Sara presented herself through improvised music and eventually an audible voice. In this article I argue that what I term relating experiences through music has contributed to strengthening Sara's ‘self-in-relation’ and given her space for increased autonomy. This allowed Sara to perceive herself in new ways, which led to a more permanent sense of her identity.