Health Musicing - Music Therapy or Music and Health? A model, empirical examples and personal reflections

Abstract

The field of music therapy is expanding rapidly into new areas, practices and interdisciplinary fields, as well as redefining its goals and values. Increasingly "music and health" is used to describe the field when it comes to naming new training programs, new interdisciplinary fields of theory and research and new research centers. The main purpose of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion of empirical and theoretical potentials and problems in the interdisciplinary field of music and health, both in clinical and in everyday life contexts. A theoretical quadrant model, inspired by Ken Wilber and Gary Ansdell, is presented and illustrated by empirical examples and references from the literature. Meta-theoretical reflections include the relevance of interpersonal or relational psychology and vitality dynamics for the theory and practice of health musicing.