[Aspects of psychotherapies. Music therapy and its specificity]

Musicotherapy, associating art and science, concerns a sensorial approach, in a therapeutic aim, through sound and music, to psychological difficulties, of numerous somatic and psychosomatic troubles, as well as neurotic and psychotic disease. Music therapy is one of the art-therapy methods, all of them dealing with mediation in reference to Winnicott, leading the patients to active and creative participation and being most of the time shorter than classical verbal therapies. It may be considered as being related to the main theories of modern psychotherapies, and refers either to Psychoanalysis or to behaviour therapies, or to cognitive therapies, or to humanistic therapies ... but, whatever its main basic theory, musicotherapy shows its specificity. Its specific features are: the variety and complexity of its techniques; the specificity of the therapeutic relation; patient, music, and therapist are united through a triangular relationship; transference is of a special quality; the way the therapist answers the patient and helps him may be either verbal or musical. Practising music and listening to music must not be considered as a therapy. Music is not therapeutic in itself. It becomes so when music is used in techniques organised in a therapeutic aim. Musicotherapy may be necessary for a patient who suffers, who asks to be helped and who finds through music a way of expression and communication. The therapeutic aim has nothing to do with musical training. Musicotherapy concerns children as well as adults and elderly people, but requires different techniques adapted to the category of patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)