Artistic Media and Music Therapy

In this article the author reflects on the characteristics of artistic media such as music, movement, visual art, and poetry and their role and importance in music therapy. Referring to the philosophy of V. Zuckerkandl, she defines art as a way of responding to the encounter of the world, i.e. world meant as everything that can become an experience. Each artistic medium does this in its own way. In a multi–medial, integrative form of therapy, this has to be considered in respect to developmental processes. The author distinguishes between three different ways of multi–modal ways of processing within multimedial work: the practicing approach, the experience–centred mode and the conflict centred mode.