• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.29-44
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• 2006

Trust and understanding relationship promoted between a therapist and a client is the basic building block to successful recovery. Its importance is not only pertaining to the music therapy but also to counseling and psychological therapy. Because of its gnificance, broad spectrum of research has been conducted for quite a long time. Historically, researches have been focused on therapists or client's chological variables rather than emotional effects on each other that occur during the therapy session. Recently researchers turned their attention to emotional relationship between a therapist and a client. With recent advances in the field of music and psychological therapy, subsequent study has been conducted to investigate the role that music plays in the therapeutic relationship. For this research, eleven music therapy sessions were conducted for the adult females who are alcoholics. The first three sessions were of group therapy. Fourth to eleventh therapy session was done individually. Throughout the research case-by-case study has been conducted on the basis of the analysis of video and audio taped materials. Analysis depends heavily on its reference from the Amir's music research of 1990, which used Ferrara's seven phases of phenomenological study. Especially, verbal and nonverbal communications were closely analyzed in musical perspective. Research revealed that music and musical instruments act as a mediator between a therapist and a client. By doing so, it protects a therapist from unnecessary negative emotional displacements of a client and creates mutual reliability between a therapist and a client. Here, research suggests that music and musical instrument play a central role in building relationship between a therapist and a client, and it indicates that it has positive effect on treatment.