Are UK music therapists talking past each other? A critical discourse analysis of three book reviews

Ansdell’s ‘Winds of Change’ paper articulated a distinction in UK music therapy between established ‘consensus’ practice drawing on psychotherapeutic principles and developing or previously hidden ‘community music therapy’ practices based on ecological or social-psychological principles. Writing that addresses different theoretical positions in music therapy (meta-theory) exists from European and American perspectives but far less from a UK perspective. This article considers the view that UK music therapy writing in general has continued along one or other of these paths and that there has been relatively little exchange between them; indeed, that UK music therapists tend to ‘talk past each other’. To explore the matter systematically, this article takes a critical discourse analysis approach to analysing three recent music therapy book reviews. Critical discourse analysis was chosen to identify underlying assumptions (‘ideologies’) that shape thinking and practice, as revealed by language use. Book reviews were identified as texts where reviewers typically engage with authors from different perspectives and in doing so offer potentially rich material for such analysis. The analysis identifies ways in which UK music therapy writing shows signs of stress across a divide between ecological and psychodynamic approaches, with reviewers going to some lengths to reconnect these different positions and so unify a discourse within which ‘fault-lines’ are present. It is suggested that, in the United Kingdom at least, ecological and psychodynamic music therapy writing are becoming more separated as discourses, with a lack of integrated meta-theoretical discussion or examples of shared practice. This inhibits coherent development of the discipline and the effective training of future practitioners. A case is made for greater integration in music therapy writing through both developments in meta-theory and by practitioners sharing examples of cross-theoretical practice.