Main description:

A collaborative effort of AMTA and Barcelona Publishers, made possible by the AMTA archives at Colorado State University, this is a collection of theoretical papers presented at the annual conferences of the National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT) during its formative years. The papers were published in the NAMT annual books of proceedings, which served as the main scholarly publication of the association until it was replaced in 1964 by the Journal of Music Therapy.

Authors include leading pioneers in music therapy as well as renown experts in related fields, including Altshuler, Dreikurs, Fultz, Gaston, Hahn, Klink, Kohut, Masserman, Meyer, Ostwald, and Ruppenthal. The papers are historically significant inasmuch as they reflect how the association and its members were thinking about the nature of music therapy at a time when there was considerable uncertainty about how it should be named or defined. Introductions and commentaries on each paper are provided by Kenneth E. Bruscia.

Contents:

Foreword: Kenneth E. Bruscia
Music Therapy - Retrospect and Perspective
Music Potentiating Drugs
The Dynamics of Music Therapy
The Musical Guidance Theory of Music Therapy
Core Constructs of Music Therapy Communication - Demonstration of a Communication Model
Therapeutic Potentials of the Ordinary Music-Maker
The Structure of Perceptual Experiences During Music Therapy Operations
The Relation of Two Contemporary Music Therapy Orientations to General Therapeutic Goals
Factors Contributing to Responses to Music
The Experiential Determinants of the Perception of Music as an Approach Toward Research in the Psychology of Music
Music Therapy - Manipulation or Process
The Psychological Significance of Musical Activity
Music and the Child in Society
Music as a Tool of Delightful Delusion
Learning, Belief, and Music Therapy
Sound, Music, and Human Behavior
Experiential Determinants of Perception: Some Considerations for Music Therapy