Logotherapie und Musiktherapie. Zur Idee einer sinnorientierten Musiktherapie

Abstract

While various psychotherapeutic approaches have been considered among music therapy’s development and reflections, existential analysis and logotherapy (EALT) – the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy – have hardly been taken into account. Founded by Viktor Frankl, his psychotherapeutic assumptions focus on the importance of meaning in life. The following contribution provides a brief overview on EALT in light of other psychotherapy approaches as well as in relation to music and music therapy. The subsequent discussion is then presented from a music-therapy perspective and includes logotherapy’s methods, value categories, anthropology, spiritual dimensions of human being, and other theoretical aspects. The debate finally evolves into the idea of a meaning-oriented music therapy. This may serve as an incentive to understand and establish music therapy from a meaning-centred perspective. Such music therapy is indicated when the search for meaning becomes a theme in therapeutic processes and crises of meaning take center stage.