The Stories We Tell

This essay had its origin in a paper I gave at the World Congress of Music Therapy in Washington, November 1999. In it I offer some meta–theoretical reflections on the various relationships between practice, discourse and theory in music therapy. I suggest that music therapy is increasingly moving towards a meta–theoretical perspective. This accepts that music therapy is made, not found; that we use theoretical narratives pragmatically; that there is nothing that music therapy ‘really is.’ Instead, the discourses that surround and produce it are the constructive materials of the ever–changing stories we tell to ourselves and others about what we do, how we do it and, most importantly, why we do it. Such a view motivates ongoing critical discussion of the discursive mechanisms which currently guide and legitimate music therapy. Our profession currently faces the dilemma of how to reconcile such a constructionist epistemology with the need to remain — as a treatment profession — empirical, pragmatic and transparent. I argue that daring to look critically at the stories we tell is part of such transparency. In this essay I have kept the style near to the spoken original and have kept citation to a minimum (but have added a few important updated references).