Music therapy in grief resolution

The multifaceted nature of grief and the enormous variation in individual c lients' responses to losses make it necessary for therapists to have wide b ackground knowledge and well-developed skills in counseling and/or psychoth erapy. The author describes an innovative method of facilitating grief reso lution using precomposed music that is significant to the patient after a m ajor loss. In this method, music is of equal importance with verbal process ing as part of the overall therapeutic approach. Musical improvisation is a lso used as a primary tool to reflect back to, and affirm for, the patient the affective content of his or her life story. This approach requires the therapist to have particular musical skills and a wide repertoire of genres and specific musical pieces, as well as intuition. Several clinical vignet tes illustrate the application of this approach. (Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 63[4], 481-498).