Hear The Music! A New Approach to Mental Health


I consider the opportunity to inscribe this brief preface to Dr. Hoffman's book as a distinct privilege. After observing therapeutic techniques come and go for twenty five years, I look upon works which claim to break new ground with a great deal of reservations. Most of them turn out to be rediscoveries of the wheel under a new name. In comparison, Dr. Hoffman does indeed present a new and genuinely effective therapeutic vehicle.

This work is the logical result of original investigations in the field of Music Therapy. It should be regarded as basic – the first systematic approach based on innovative but experimentally sound investigation as well as brilliant observation.

Those of my colleagues who have struggled with varying degrees of discouragement, sometimes verging on despair, to establish some type of therapeutic communication with those who will not respond – the withdrawn, the autistic, the depressed, will share my deep appreciation for the technique delineated in this volume. I think any experienced therapist can almost literally reach back into his past and pick out a particularly recalcitrant non-responder and know that this technique would have worked with that case had it been available.

I hope to see the clinical approach to music therapy widely practice in the near future and I believe this book will stimulate its general acceptance. The successful therapeuses which I confidently predict will result where there was only stalemate or failure before, will explain my sense of privilege in being associated in however small a way with Dr. Hoffman's work.

Robert K. Alsofrom, PhD.

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