‘Microanalysis of an Extract of a Non-Directive Music Therapy Session Captures the Perceived Moment of Change’, for Royal Society of Medicine and Live Music Now Conference ‘Examining the Utility of Music Interventions for Children with Learning Disabilities’

L is a twelve-year-old boy who has Cerebral Palsy and a learning disability, engaging with non-directive music therapy (Rogers, 1961, 1985; Miller, 2013). Microanalysis was engaged with to understand the utility of this musical intervention and to present evidence of the impact of the work, experienced by the music therapist as a moment of change in the music therapy session. As Spiro and Himberg (2016, p. 1) state, “there is lack of clarity regarding what in music therapy sessions drives those changes.” The increasing demand for evidence based practice in music therapy (Pavlicevic et al., 2009; Aigen, 2015) led to an exploration of methodologies that might explain this perceived change rigorously and objectively, through microanalysis (Wosch and Wigram, 2007) and engagement with music therapy assessment tools (Bruscia, 1987; Spiro and Himberg, 2016).