Drawing on reflections on two case stories from music therapy, we will develop several suggestions about relationships between musicking, selfhood, and mental health. The first case story is about Fred, a young man who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The second is about Frida, an adult woman diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. There are substantial differences between their situations and medical conditions, but their experiences of music therapy have some shared characteristics, such as how their relationships to themselves and the world have been affected positively, in what we describe as a journey of embodied selfhood through musicking. We explore ways to theoretically frame the similarities in their music therapy experiences. The framework used when developing the theoretical argument is enactive cognitive science. Fred's and Frida's stories, as well as an emergent body of scientific work, indicate that musicking in music therapy could work as a 'laboratory' for future examinations of how implicit body memory, intercorporeality, rhythm, and synchrony are central to the development of higher social and cognitive processes associated with consciousness and mental health. Based on this, we have identified a range of possible areas of future research and theory development.
Stige et al. (Wed,) studied this question.