Receptive music therapy

Music therapeutic interventions consisting on listening to fragments of any music genre with a therapeutic goal fall under receptive music therapy. Relaxing while listening to music is a very healthy habit, but it's not considered music therapy because in this case there's no therapeutic process. We speak of a music therapy intervention when a music therapist uses musical means (in this case listening to music) to reach a therapeutic goal, e.g., a depressed patient's stimulation or group cohesion.

Listening to music is a different process than listening to words or environmental sounds. Henk Smeijsters ¹ defines four different listening processes: determinant listening, technical listening, qualifying listening and associative listening.

• Determinant listening is the one we use when we want to identify a sound source, e.g. when we hear a noise in the middle of the night and listen to find out if we're dealing with a mouse or a thief in house.
• Technical listening is the one we adopt when we analyze the music that we are listening to: e.g., its structure or the instruments involved.
• Qualifying listening is the one that allows us to state if we like the music we are listening to or not.
• Associative listening is the one that permits us to evoke emotions or remembrances in response to the listened music fragment.

Which kind of music is the most suitable for music therapy? We can use any kind of music in music therapy, as long as the client and the music therapist feel comfortable working with it. There's no music which is “good for depression” or “music to get relaxed”. There is a certain music which can help one individual in one specific situation to get over a depression or to get relaxed. It is the task of client (and eventually his or her family as well) and music therapist together to discover the most suitable music for every therapeutic process. 

 

1Henk Smeijsters, Handboek muziektherapie, Bohn Stafleu van Loghum