INDICATIONS AND THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF HUMAN-STRUCTURAL INPATIENT MUSIC-THERAPY

The present paper describes music therapy as practiced in the Dynamic Psychiatric Hospital Menterschwaige in Munich. Following a short histo rical outline, the authors describe human-structural inpatient music t herapy as a nonverbal therapy, characterized by specific features free improvisation, to render group-dynamic processes, ''audible'', to dim inish anxiety and to differentiating it from other forms of psychother apy. It is particularly apt, by making use of facilitate interpersonal contact and relationships in the here-and-now situation of the group: These features are of advantage in the therapy of symbiotic, anxious, autistic and paranoid patients. The therapeutic effect of human-struc tural music therapy can be deduced from the patients' own answers on q uestionnaires and from the therapists' interventions on several possib le levels, taking into consideration the present unconscious group dyn amics, as well as individual transfer and countertransfer phenomena, a nd using both metaphoric interpretations of the group atmosphere and m usic-theoretical interpretations, Thus, without using a specific techn ique for each diagnostic category, it allows therapeutic work with a w ide range of pre-oedipally disturbed patients, when integrated in the global therapeutic milieu of the hospital.