Clinical Applications of Music Therapy in Developmental Disability, Paediatrics and Neurology

Claire Flower has 20 years' experience as a music therapist in clinical practice, working in a range of settings with a wide variety of client groups. She works now at the Cheyne Child Development Service based at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London. Claire is a past Chairperson of the British Society for Music Therapy, maintains a supervision practice and continues to both write about and present her work extensively. Jos De Backer is a Professor of music therapy at Leuven University College of Arts (LUCA), campus Lemmensinstituut, Belgium and is Head of the Masters training course in music therapy. He studied music education and music therapy in Belgium and Vienna and he completed his PhD in music therapy at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. He is Head of the Music Therapy Department in the University Psychiatric Centre KULeuven, campus Kortenberg where he works as a music therapist treating young psychotic patients and patients with personality disorder. De Backer specialises in clinical improvisation, is a member of the advisory Editorial Board for the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy and of the Editorial Panel of the British Journal of Music Therapy and is a past President of the European Music Therapy Confederation. Simon Gilbertson is a trained musician and music therapist. He is a lecturer in music therapy at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland, and was previously Head of Music Therapy at the Klinik Holthausen in Germany. After gaining his doctorate at David Aldridge's Chair for Qualitative Research in Medicine at the University Witten Herdecke he went to work with David at the Nordoff-Robbins Centre in Witten, Germany. Colwyn Trevarthen is Emeritus Professor of Child Psychology and Psychobiology at the University of Edinburgh.

• Foreword, Colwyn Trevarthen. PART I: PAEDIATRICS. 1. Premature birth and music therapy, Monika Nocker-Ribaupierre, Germany. 2. Indications for the inclusion of music therapy in the care of hospitalized infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia, Helen Shoemark, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. 3. 'A song of life': Improvised songs with children with cancer and serious blood disorders, Ann Turry, Hackensack University Medical Center, New Jersey. PART II: DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY. 4. Contact in music: The analysis of musical behaviour in children with communication disorder and pervasive developmental disability for differential diagnosis, Tony Wigram. 5. Music and autism: Vocal improvisation as containment of stereotypes, Gianluigi di Franco, ISFOM, Naples. 6. Islanders: Making connections in music therapy, Claire Flower, London. 7. Client-centred therapy for emotionally disturbed teenagers with moderate learning disability, John Strange, William Morris School, London. 8. The use of creative improvisation and psychodyanamic insights in music therapy with an abused child, Pauline Etkin, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre, London. 9. Orff music therapy with multiple-handicapped children, Melanie Voight, Kinderzentrum Munchen, Munich. 10. The music, the meaning and the therapist's dilemma, Sandra Brown, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre, London. PART III: NEUROLOGY. 11. 'Singing my life, playing myself': Song-based and improvisatory methods of music therapy with individuals with neurological impairments, Wendy Magee, Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability, London. 12. Music therapy in neuro-surgical rehabilitation, Simon Gilbertson, Klinik Holthausen, Hattingen, Germany. PART IV: ASPECTS OF TRAINING AND CLINICAL SUPERVISION. 13. Integrative approaches to supervision for music therapists, Isabelle Frohne-Hageman, Frits-Perls Institut, Berlin. 14. Psychoanalytically-oriented music therapy supervision, Janice Dvorkin, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas. 15. Music therapy training: A process to develop the musical and therapeutic identity of the music therapist, Tony Wigram, Jos De Backer and Jan van Camp.

Provides an articulate discussion surrounding the components and the quality of the therapuetic relationship involving the patient, the music, and the music therapist. The writers lead the reader through a hallway of psychiactric termssuch as transference, release and containment, all within the context of the music therapist's perspective. They emphasise the importance of music therapists' personal expertise in the musical instruments they choose for use with patients. They highlight a respect for ones limitations and fears in stressing that "musical therapists be able to anylyze and work through personal fears of loss of control in order to deal in a therapuetic way with psychiactric patients" (p.20). They state that the musical experience is necessary in helping the patients acquire an insight needed to work through conflict. Through the variety of clinical presentations offered by this international forum of music therapy professionals, the reader has witnessed a rich balance of blending of psychotherapuetic theory and clinical music therapy in action. The range of contributions, although at times perhaps more reflective of the international approach to music therapy with it's emphasis on music improvisation, nonetheless makes a serious contribution to the annals of music therapy literature in the psychiactric setting. The benefits of reading this anthology to those serving the needs of the psychiactric client will endure long after the settling of first reflections.