Teaching Philosophy

Resonating Through Music

Michele Forinash. DA, MT-BC, LMHC

My personal awareness of the transformative power of music making is what led me to the field of expressive music therapy. As a child growing up in the deep south, I came early on to know and love the music of the southern culture as well as the classical music which I later studied. I knew that Patsy Cline, Bob Wills, Hank Williams as well as Beethoven and Brahms helped me negotiate my emotional world and express through playing or listening my felt sense of the world outside me. As I matured, I searched for a way to share my music in a meaningful manner with others. Although music has been used therapeutically for centuries, music therapy did not become an established profession until 1950 when an association was founded to support the therapeutic work that was being done in Veterans' Hospitals following World War II. The association, now called the American Music Therapy Association, has over 5,000 members, publishes journals on research and clinical practice, and hosts multiple conferences. The practice of music therapy has many definitions. The one I resonate with most holds that music therapy is the intentional use of music to address physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and spiritual processes that direct clients toward health and well-being.

I first became involved in music therapy in 1981 as a graduate student at New York University. My earliest clinical work was in hospice settings with terminally ill adults and children. This work taught me many things about the use of music in clinical treatment and impacted me as a person on a very profound level. The beauty and intensity of working with terminally ill children and adults solidified my commitment to the field of music therapy. This clinical work also sparked my interest in qualitative research. By facing death and dying, I was constantly confronted with wanting to find meaningful ways to deepen my knowledge about the clinical aspects of music therapy without losing sight of the real people with whom I worked. Qualitative research has enabled me to address these issues and so remains my ongoing passion.

My love of teaching and working with students brought me to Lesley University in 1995, first as an adjunct and then as the Coordinator of the Music Therapy Specialization. This specialization focuses on providing students with both an overview of the various theoretical models in music therapy, such as Nordoff-Robbins Creative Music Therapy, Priestly's Analytical Music Therapy, and Alvin's Free Improvisation. I believe that it is important to expose students to the variety of theoretical approaches and clinical models, and it is also crucial to encourage them to develop their own unique style of clinical work which may integrate several of these models.

Students come into the program from many different fields such as music education, music performance, psychology, and philosophy, yet all have in common a love of music making and a desire to work with people with disabilities.

This quote by Art Blakely sums up what music is in my life: "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."