It is therefore important to find out just what the relationship is between the responses elicited from certain musical experiences and the resulting mental, physical, or emotional state that is engendered. One additional consideration in the overview of the problem is that trained musicians, while certainly aware of the inner relationships between tonality and behavior, are often untrained in therapy, or in aspects of psychology.
It will be the working hypothesis of this paper that remedial music therapy may indeed help the mental, perceptual, or emotional growth of the handicapped child or adult, regardless of the musical aptitude or ability expressed. In fact, research has shown that even the most severely handicapped person has basic needs for love, acceptance, security, and success and must find at least minimal means of certain self-expression. At least one author believes that music may be one of the only ways a handicapped or disabled person can complete any semblance of self-actualization. With music, the handicapped can communicate; with music, the handicapped can integrate and identify emotion and express it openly; with music, a restricted physical or mental means will usually allow some form of expression, however limited that may be (Alvin, 1985, p. 3).
The literature in the field may be broken down into three major areas of categorization. The first, and most broad, sees music therapy in the larger context of art therapy. Since each of the arts (music, dramatic, and visual arts) use some physical objects in psychotherapy, it is possible to change the perceptions the client has by simply manipulating the outside object. Moreover, art therapies are safe types of expression because "expressive action with object may allow for the venting of emotions that would either be too threatening or inappropriate to act out in a situation other than a therapeutic dramatization" (McNiff, 1981, p. xiv). This view also hol...