Music therapy newly defined

The definition of a therapeutic discipline provides an important demarcation and offers guidance for patients, interested parties, and professional actors in health care. The definition of music therapy serves to portray the therapeutic profession both to music therapists and to others within the public health care system. Thus, it contributes decisively to the profession’s political profiling. A definition of music therapy must incorporate a wide range of approaches and methodologies. It must be valid for the fields of psychotherapy and remedial/special education, as well as more physiological forms of therapy such as neonatology and neuro-rehabilitation. In this article, different definitions are presented and critically questioned. This was carried out by using the grammatical and semantic units for defining music therapy that were introduced by Bruscia. Against the background of new developments within music therapy, the necessity for a new definition is shown. A new definition of music therapy is presented, and its conceptual components are explained.