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Music at the Edge. The Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with AIDS by Colin Lee. London: Routledge, 1996. Hardback £49.26, paperback £19.25, 171 pp + CD.

Music at the Edge. The Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with AIDS by Colin Lee. London: Routledge, 1996. Hardback £49.26, paperback £19.25, 171 pp + CD. This is a brave, yet exposing, account of the relationship between the author, a music therapist, and his client, Francis, a musician diagnosed with AIDS. Their journey together in music therapy ultimately resulted in the publication of this moving and extraordinary book and the reader is invited to share in this process by listening to the CD, included with the text, which offers edited extracts of their musical work together. Supporting the dying process, provides the focus for this revealing and emotive description of a music therapist's attempt to understand and work with a client whose relationship to music was already of deep significance. The central role of the music and how it was used by the client to seek acknowledgement and validation of the creativity within, is very carefully considered. This results in many interesting issues emerging from the text which Lee presents openly for the reader to question and think about. Inevitably, as a result of this process, he lays himself open to criticism. It is in the spirit of this book, however, that these questions are thought about and openly discussed extending the debate on music therapy where psychotherapeutic processes are thought to be exclusive to the origins of the work. The author presents a thoughtful and heartsearching account of this therapy, taking us through from beginning to end. Transcriptions of the therapist's and client's conversations and the client's free associations with his music are included alongside the musical extracts. The writer attempts to present the material in as factual a way as possible whilst at the same time writing subjectively, thus allowing the reader access to the tortuous journey he, himself, undertook in trying to support the client towards his inevitable death. This work exposed the therapist to challenges which he had not previously had to face and Lee does not shy away from sharing these with us. He describes, in detail, numerous moments of indecision and 'bewilderment'. These seem, from his descriptions, to have been exacerbated by the theoretical stance taken which placed the music in an exclusively central position rather than closely related to, and therefore influenced by, the deeper psychological processes at play between himself and his client. Lee describes how he was frequently lost for words and unprepared for the way in which his client wanted to use the therapy. Having read the book in some detail and listened to all the musical examples, I am left wondering about the writer's understanding of therapeutic boundaries, both within and out of the music, which were so clearly dissolved in this therapy. There are dangers inherent in ignoring unconscious forms of communication and taking up instead a vaguely spiritual and intuitive position. Lee tries to explain the relationship which developed between himself and his client, the therapy eventually having been abandoned in favour of friendship, when he writes;