E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

D'ulisse, M. E..: The Educational Formation Of The Music Therapist ...
learn how to recognize one’s own sound identities (ISOs) and the
intermediary personal and integrative objects which enter into the
relationship.
To this aim, throughout the formation process, the technical knowledge of
each GOS (instrumental operative group) instrument, their division into
different categories and their historical evolution is also deepened, and so is
the knowledge about the use of different materials. Within each level of
didactic music therapy, the student will construct instruments of his/her
own creation so as to explore his/her own creative and experimental
resources.
The last phase of the academic course will be accompanied by a period of
in-service internship within public or private structures, which will allow the
student to closely observe different pathologies.
Among the requirements for becoming a music therapist, are, according to
Benenzon, the vocation for service, the ability to maintain the professional
secret and the knowledge of the moral and ethical problems related to the
application of Music Therapy. It is thus important to start, with due
caution, from the desire of the patient to establish a link, while respecting
all expressions of rejection and keeping in mind that Music Therapy relies on
some acoustic phenomena whose effects upon the human being are not
directly known to us.
The orientation of those schools which apply Benenzon’s theory leads the
student to have a rather strong methodological imprinting, especially as far
as concerns the clinical application of its two basic principles, the sound
identity and the intermediary object.
Both the theoretical study and the stage/internship experience provide the
future music therapist with a clear reference through which he/she will
then independently find his/her own mode of therapeutic intervention.
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