British
Journal of Music Therapy
Book review
Full title: Clinical Training Guide for the Student
Music Therapist
Authors: Barbara L. Wheeler, Carol L. Shultis and
Donna W. Polen
Publisher: Barcelona Publishers
c/o Pathway Book Service
4 White Brook Road
Gilsum, NH 03448
USA
Year of first publication: 2005
Numbers of pages: 213
Price: £25,
paperback available from the BSMT
ISBN number: 1-891278-27-4
This book is written for student
music therapists in the USA during their clinical
placements. After
two introductory chapters there are four chapters
aimed at helping students to plan and organise
music therapy sessions as well as set appropriate
aims and objectives for treatment. One of these
chapters is a very detailed chapter on client
assessment and is written by a different author:
Anthony Meadows.
The four following chapters 3 to 6 each look at
different types of musical experiences that students
might have in music therapy sessions: improvising,
composing, performing and listening. The remaining
7 chapters focus on specific areas such as working
with groups and with individuals (chapters 15 and
16) and the last chapter (18) examines several lists
of competencies necessary to be a music therapist. Each chapter guides the reader to texts and books
that will be useful to read and incorporates relevant
literature by a wide range of music therapists. At
the end of the chapters there is a list of ‘assignments’
(questions and exercises) for students. There are
three levels of assignments depending on whether
the student is observing, co-leading or leading in
their placement. In the introduction the authors
suggest that students should use these exercises
in a flexible way, possibly re-reading the book at
different points in their training. The book is well constructed and easy to read. I
read the book from beginning to end but I imagine
that many student music therapists or music therapy
teachers will want to dip into various chapters,
and the book is ideal for this purpose with clear
headings and detailed references. There were many aspects that I immediately found
very useful. For example: the list of different aspects
students should look out for when first observing
music therapy sessions (chapter 2, p.15) However,
I might have added ‘who came with the client’ and
‘how the client was handed over’, to these lists. Other lists and tables that I was drawn to and felt
would be particularly helpful in my music therapy
teaching were: Bruscia’s table in chapter 6 (p.68)
on guidelines for activity planning; the example
of a task analysis in this same chapter (p.70); the
list of different types of listening in music therapy
(chapter 11, p.109) and the worksheet format to guide
students in their reflection about music therapy
work they have seen or experienced (chapter 18, p.
183 and 184). My slight reservation when recommending the book
to music therapists in the UK comes from the fact
that music therapy training and practice in the USA
can be very different from that in the UK. As a result
some parts of the book may be a little surprising
to UK music therapists. Although there are a few post-graduate music therapy
training courses in the USA most of the courses are
undergraduate four year training courses and this
book aims to meet the needs of students at different
levels of training and experience. For older and
often more experienced post-graduate music therapy
students in the UK, some aspects of this book will
therefore appear a little basic and simplistic. All
music therapy students in the UK have on-going (and
usually individual) weekly clinical placement supervision
where the types of questions asked in the assignments
at the end of each chapter would be covered. I therefore
think it is unlikely that music therapy students
in the UK would use these exercises, although they
might well provide a useful springboard for discussion
in clinical supervision. The book goes into great detail regarding the setting
of goals and assessment methods in music therapy.
Music therapists in the UK will learn from these
sections but may be confused because this amount
of detail is unusual in current practice in the UK.
I found chapter 4 quite difficult to follow, partly
perhaps because of the large numbers of categories
and subsections that often overlapped. I wondered
whether it would have been helpful to make it clearer
at the beginning of this chapter that the word ‘assessment’
is used in different ways in music therapy, ie to
determine suitability for music therapy, to aid diagnosis,
or to determine general progress. The detailed assessment
forms that are sometimes used in the USA for this
last type of assessment are hardly ever used in the
UK, where assessment to determine general progress
will always be part of the on-going treatment rather
than a separate assessment process. Very detailed
questionnaires such as the one on p.36 are sometimes
used in music therapy research investigations in
the UK, but only very rarely in general practice. In the UK, a much more central part of the training
will be on how individual music therapy students
learn to apply their general musical skills and their
ability to improvise within the various clinical
settings. I really enjoyed the section on ‘improvising
experiences’ (p.151) and the reference to Maslow’s
(1999) “childlike sense of the world”. However, I
would have welcomed more on this particular subject
as, in my experience, this is the most difficult
skill to impart to students. In spite of these slight reservations, the differences
in music therapy teaching and practice in the UK
and the USA that are apparent through this book are
interesting in themselves and should provoke constructive
questioning, leading to new insights. This book is an invaluable addition to the literature,
which I would recommend to all music therapists involved
in training, and which should be made available to
all music therapy students. I know I will constantly
refer to it in my teaching. Amelia Oldfield
Amelia Oldfield currently works as a part time music
therapist at a child development centre and at a
unit for child and family psychiatry. She is also
a part time lecturer on the music therapy training
course at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
Wheeler,
Barbara L., Carol L. Shultis & Donna
W. Polen (2005). Clinical Training Guide for
the Student Music Therapist. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona
Publishers.
Reviewed by Jane Edwards, Course Director,
MA in Music Therapy, University of Limerick
and
Guest Professor, Institute for Music Therapy,
University of the Arts, Berlin.
I showed this book to a colleague
and highlighted for her the extraordinary number
of combined
years of experience of the three authors. She
described the authors as "those who have
lived to tell the tale of how to live to tell
the tale." I can only concur. The book is
written from the perspective of a wealth of experience
and skills in music therapy student supervision
on-site as well as course teaching.
The first author, Professor Barbara Wheeler,
Professor and Director of Music Therapy at the
University of Louisville Kentucky is a distinguished
and productive contributor to the field of music
therapy and is well known internationally. Carol
Shultis is Director of Music Therapy and Recreation
for Forbes Health System in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
and has been the Clinical Training Director there
since 1981. The third author Donna Polen is Music
Therapy Co-ordinator for a developmental disability
service in Newark, New York. Remarkably she has
provided training to 60 interns since 1983. Without
reading a word of the book I would have had confidence
in the product from the combined experience of
these authors. At the same time a collaborative
book about music therapy clinical training is
welcome. There are many and varied component
parts of competent clinical practice therefore
the wider the experience base for a book's authorship,
the more confidence we can have in its relevance
and usefulness for our teaching. In addition,
the outstanding contribution of Anthony Meadows
in primarily authoring the chapter on assessment
should also be acknowledged.
The strengths of the book lie in its clarity
of structure. Eighteen chapters outline the music
therapy process. Each could be used as stand
alone reading matter or as the basis for a seminar.
Alternatively any grouping of chapters could
be used to structure a series of clinical classes.
Each of the chapters concludes with a number
of assignments. These are directed at three levels
of students – Level 1 is primarily for the student
who is at the early stage of observing, participating
and assisting. Level 2 is directed at the student
who is planning and co-leading sessions, and
level 3 is aimed at the student who is leading
and directing sessions independently.
Other excellent teaching texts such as Suzanne
Hanser's The New Music Therapist's Handbook (2000)
and the Handbook of Music Therapy edited by Leslie
Bunt and Sarah Hoskyns (2002) also provide an
introduction and overview of the field for students.
This new book however is distinct in that approaches
and methods with different populations are discussed
within chapters. The overarching structure of
the book focuses on the music therapy process;
from planning through to conducting sessions
and then documentation. While the book is clearly
intended for the music therapy student in the
USA, it is possible that European programmes
could consider incorporating the book into teaching,
at least as supplementary reading. For postgraduate
programmes, the book could be used to teach students
in the introductory phase of their practice training,
or where practice training is necessarily brief
in some countries the book could be used as pre-reading
for the course. The book could be used as a resource
for clinical site supervisors or could be used
as the basis of teaching clinical skills during
classes in training.
It is worthy of comment that every single reference
is included thoughtfully, with demonstrable clarity
as to the authors comprehension of its content
and context. This book models perfectly for the
music therapy student, the depth of understanding
required to cite texts.
A further strength is the linking of theory
to practice. Students can find it difficult to
understand
why they need to have any theoretical frameworks
in the practice of music therapy – they can be
desperate to get into the clinical work and feel
frustrated at needing to ‘know' about the ideas
that underlie the different ways of working.
For an early stage student, this
book could act as an exemplar of why theory
is not just
required
but also useful. At the same time the student
is directed to useful further reading giving
the welcome impression that ideas in music therapy
are linked into and grow out from practice; there
are not two separate entities "theory" and "practice" in
the field of music therapy.
There are no major weaknesses
in this text and I heartily recommend its use
in clinical teaching.
At the same time I must point out that while
the A4 format suits the function of the book,
occasionally the book can fall open with two
dense pages of text staring up. This might be
a little overwhelming for some students grappling
with ideas in the early stage of training. Also,
very occasionally there are too many diverse
concepts referenced without explanation. While
this mirrors the reality of practice, a text
book form of these ideas perhaps requires some
greater distinctions to be made. For example
in the first chapter there is a paragraph which
mentions long-term residential facilities, professional
boundaries, and "therapeutic distance" within
a few sentences. Each of these notions probably
requires their own paragraph to help the student
with the fact they are not necessarily interdependent.
With directed reading however this would be easily
addressed.
I anticipate that many generations of students
will give thanks for this book. The authors are
to be commended for an excellent contribution
to the field of music therapy.
References
Bunt, Leslie & Sarah Hoskyns (Eds.) (2002).
The handbook of music therapy. London: Routledge.
Hanser, Suzanne (2000). The new music therapist's
handbook. (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Berklee Press.
This bookreview was released
December 5, 2006. ©2006
Nordic Journal of Music Therapy
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