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In Search of a Theory

This paper is a version of a talk originally given at the 3rd International Symposium of Nordoff Robbins Music Therapists in 2006. It is a personal account of my own development as a music therapist over more than 15 years working with children and adults. It describes how I became interested in psychodynamic music therapy and how my understanding of the relationship between music therapy and psychodynamic theory has changed over that time. The paper also relates my own ideas to those of other music therapy writers over the past 15 years, in particular Ansdell (1995), Pavlicevic (1996) and Streeter (1999). It is not intended as a full critique of these writers, and moreover some other relevant texts (e.g. Aigen 2005 and Malloch and Trevarthen 2009) are not referred to in depth. It does, however, present a preliminary model of the possible relationships between improvisational music therapy in general (as practised in the UK) and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and in particular the relationship between musical interaction in music therapy and psychodynamic theory.