Music Therapy As Noninvasive Treatment: Who Says?

摘要

The claim that music therapy is a noninvasive treatment modality appears to be widespread in the professional literature and popular press, yet the term noninvasive remains undefined and the claim largely unsubstantiated. The assertion that music therapy is nonintrusive has been applied to both medical and nonmedical treatment settings. This essay explores the specifics of and inherent contradictions in this assertion; that is, invasiveness may be beneficial to and even necessary for therapeutic change in transformative music psychotherapy. The reader is challenged to consider the invasive potentials in all features of music therapy as a multi-faceted process. The essay concludes with speculation about why the claim survives. Questions for further exploration related to this topic are also offered.