In Defense of Beauty: A Role for the Aesthetic in Music Therapy Theory

The role of aesthetic considerations in music therapy theory has an interesting history. Its examination sheds some light on fundamental areas of tension in music therapy as a health–promoting discipline that takes place through an art form. The first part of this two–part article examined the origins of thinking on this topic and provided an overview of its development from a variety of perspectives. In this second part of the article, critiques of aesthetic thinking are presented (Tyson, 1965; Priestley, 1994; Grinde, 2000; Dissanayake, 2001; Smeijsters, 2005; Stige, 1998) and responded to in an effort to advance the dialogue on this topic within the music therapy literature. The author's stance is that aesthetic experience can be a highly relevant aspect of music therapy practice in certain applications, a belief that rests on the more fundamental notion that musical experiences in clinical contexts can be continuous with nonclinical musical experiences.