Group Music Therapy – a part of the music therapy students’ training at Aalborg University

Self-experience and personal therapy are implemented as a mandatory part of the 5-year music therapy training programme in Aalborg University (Department of Communication and Psychology), Denmark. The fact that personal therapy processes are highly prioritised can be traced back to the analytical music therapy orientation (Priestley 1994, Pedersen 2002). A unique aspect in Aalborg is that the students are involved in therapeutic activities from the very beginning, and the personal developmental work happens parallel to theoretical and musical learning. It is considered a benefit that the self-experience-training is integrated in an academic culture and the experiences from the self-development processes are involved in the understanding and the communication of psychological and music therapeutic theories and music therapy methodology (Wigram et al., 2002). Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd