Debates and Controversies Flashcards
What 3 approaches reflect music therapy and are sources of debate within the literature?
History
Geography
Evidence
These three things don’t talk about the same thing when they talk about music therapy
How does history relate to music therapy?
The tradition behind the type of music therapy - debate in the literature
How does geography relate to music therapy?
Where you are in the world is important. Accessibility etc. - debate in the literature
How does evidence relate to music therapy?
What you will accept as evidence for whether or not music therapy works, and how it works - debate in the literature
What is there a fundamental split between in terms of music therapy?
Psychology-based approach
Music-based approach
What is the psychology-based approach to music therapy?
Therapy has to be based on theory
Need to have empirical evidence of the effects of music therapy
What is the music-based approach to music therapy?
People who have a professional music background are seeing benefits from the therapy sessions themselves and have their own ideas about what works
Musicians don’t feel that it is appropriate to carry out empirical tests of the effectiveness of their therapy
How does Streeter (1999) criticise the music-based approach?
Comes from a more psychological point of view
Argues that the music itself has some sort of ‘magical’ power and has an absolutist position
This argument stems from the tension between practitioners who don’t feel they need to prove that music therapy works - keep doing whatever works
What makes it hard to provide evidence of the effectiveness of music therapy?
Lack of theoretical basis
Don’t know WHY it is working - don’t know how to SHOW that it is working
How do we build evidence base in music therapy?
There are sources of reporting empirical studies of music therapy
What are examples of reporting empirical studies of music therapy?
Journal of Music Therapy
What did Cross (2014) argue about success of music therapy?
Argued that we need to be more specific about what constitutes success
Argues that you need to operationalise your variables. E.g., carry out an observation study where you are counting incidences of something like communication events in a session to prove Suzanna’s improvement. E.g., eye contact.
Psychological-based approach. In debate of practitioner-approach.
What did Ansdell (2014) argue about a reductionist approach?
Argues against finding empirical evidence for success.
Therapy is not about counting and analysing data. What to know more about what the communication events were LIKE rather than how many there were.
Reductionist approach.
Therapy is more about finding out what the communication events were LIKE.
Need to take a more holistic approach and look at the clients development as a WHOLE across the sessions of the therapy.
