Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

showing the ability for symbolic play. During his last stay he had begun
to say „yes” and „no”. His sense of humor is delightful. The goal we have
now is promoting Paul’s development of more differentiated and
complex interactions with more communicative character and the
promotion of his ability for structuring play flexibly and for self-
expression through music. To close this case example I would like to
describe a sequence which occured during his last stay at the
Kinderzentrum. As we ended the session the previous day, Paul had
„baked a cake” and was of the opinion that it wasn’t done yet. I had
ended the session saying that we would let the cake set in the oven
(which was the Pipedream). He had remembered this. After playing using
the cymbals, he tried to make me understand what he wanted, pointing
and answering my naming instruments with „no” until I named the
Pipedream. Paul took up the activity where we had left off the day before,
thoroughly enjoying delaying the cake’s being done, heating up the oven
repeatedly by playing the Pipedream.
Summary
At the beginning of this paper I stated that in order to establish
indications for music therapy it is helpful to base these on a description
of developmental processes of the individual child instead of on the
global diagnosis of the child’s developmental problem. Problems in one
area of development affect development in other areas of development as
well. Therefore, it is not possible to consider only one aspect of
development, for example social interaction, without taking other areas
of development such as cognitive development into account.
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