Music, Music Therapy and Refugees

This book is the first of its kind dealing with music, therapy, and traumas for music therapists, psychotherapists, and other mental health workers working with refugees, asylum seekers and their families. It follows the music therapy literature by studying music and traumas from the psychodynamic principles and can be used for the educational purposes of treating, especially from different cultural backgrounds. In addition to the clinical and educational purposes, this book can also be used as a reference book for researchers of music therapy and its methods for refugees. This book is contributing to the most recent psychological, social, and philosophical discussions and aspects of liberating musical practices from oppression and discrimination. Cultural attuning and dialoguing are proposed as the methods for building ethically sound practices with clients from different social and normative backgrounds.

Dr Sami Alanne, DMus, MPhil, is an Adjunct Professor/Associate Professor of Music Therapy and a Researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki), Finland. He is affiliated both to Uniarts Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy and Uniarts Helsinki’s Research Institute. He also works as a music therapist, training psychotherapist (music psychotherapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy), supervisor, psychoanalyst, and music psychotherapist of children, adolescents, their families, and adults in the Helsinki metropolitan area. His research topics include traumas, refugeeism, mental health and psychotherapy from the point of view of music, arts, culture, philosophy, and society. He has presented at multiple international conferences and published several peer-reviewed scientific articles and studies of music and psychotherapy.