Music Therapy: Intimate Notes

Mercedes Pavlicevic was post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Music, University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Academic Supervisor at the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre in London. She was also co-director of the Music Therapy Training Programme at the University of Pretoria, and the author of Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship, published by Jessica Kingsley.

• 1. Introduction: Finding our muses. PART I: MUSIC THERAPY WITH CHILDREN. 2. Daniel: Blossoms and baptism. 3. Wendy: `I used to be crying every day...` 4. Sinead: `Here is my arm...' 5. Giorgos: Isolation in a hospital ward. PART II: MUSIC THERAPY WITH ADULTS. 6. Martha: Working with wellness. 7. Shireen: Into the void of brain injury. 8. Olive and Jim: Senility and wisdom. 9. Mirian and Seaun: Danger and inimacy in a secure unit. 10. Mary and Steve: Creativity and terminal illness. 11. Conclusion: Intimate notes. Bibliography. Index.

What is striking and engaging in this excellent book is that it makes us reflect on the whole business of communication - what it is for us humans to be conversational creatures. It challenges some over-easy conclusions about who is and who and isn't capable of conversing - but that, of course, is exactly what the whole work of music therapy is about. But it also shows the difficulty and importance of genuine communication: the degree to which we don't know what we mean unless and until we find an answering rhythm in a listener; the degree to which we foreclose the processes of communication because we want to spare ourselves the letting-go and taking time involved. That our humanity is realised most fully in a literal shared attunement of some kind is a more suggestive thought than volumes of ethics or metaphysics. Pavlicevic gives us a real narrative philosophy in these stories, poignantly and vividly told and sensitively and self-critically thought through.