A Model of Typhlo Music Therapy in Educational and Rehabilitation Work with Visually Impaired Persons

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the specifics of a support intervention for visually impaired persons, carried out according to the author’s model of typhlo music therapy. The model is based mainly on the sightless approach to experiencing music, the healing potential of music and, above all, the rehabilitative and therapeutic dimension of the human–music relationship. As a result, the fundamental feature which distinguishes the proposed method from other models of support interventions is primarily the tactile and auditory nature of the measures, programmes, session structures and therapy session scenarios used. Consequently, the rehabilitation and therapeutic activities do not require the participants to use unimpaired visual perception and forms of behaviour requiring a fully functional visual analyser. This model plays an important role in stimulating the individual development of persons with a disability, improving the impaired body functions and in optimal adaptation to everyday functioning without sight or with serious visual impairment. The model was developed in the early 1990s and it was later modified, improved and evaluated in the Department of Music Therapy at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wroclaw and in the Maria Grzegorzewska Lower Silesian Special Educational Centre for Blind and Visually Impaired Children in Wroclaw (Poland) over the last thirty years. The authors of the article, professionals in such disciplines as clinical psychology, music therapy, music education and special education, share their thoughts, observations, experiences and conclusions based on their many years of work. They attempt, among other things, to standardise the basic terms, concepts and definitions in the field of music therapy for visually impaired persons by relating them to the paradigms of special education.