2nd CONFIAM INTERNATIONAL MUSIC THERAPY CONFERENCE
and 9th NATIONAL CONGRESS

14-15 October 2017 

 

MUSIC THERAPY:  BETWEEN ART, SOCIETY AND SCIENCE

The second Confiam international conference[1] will focus on three different aspects that herald evolutionary potential and new challenges in Music Therapy: scientific investigation into musical functions; areas of intervention relating to social issues, with their relative standard clinical and research practices; and the development of analyses on musical improvisation in Music Therapy.

Advances in research into the relationship between man and music in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive psychology present new questions for Music Therapy, regarding both its own potential on the rehabilitative and functional front, and how these aspects can be integrated into a relational therapeutic approach.
At the same time, new research into specific aspects of the musical experience in Music Therapy settings opens the way for an objectively dialogic relationship with the disciplines to which Music Therapy has thus far appertained, and also lays the foundations for further advances.
Finally, the third factor currently driving Music Therapy towards new fields of application, or towards greater specialization and diffusion in areas where it has been working for some time, has to do with new social scenarios, some with momentous, global reach, others particularly reflective of the situation in Europe, and especially in Italy. These include: the ageing population and increasing demand for elderly care; the increase in diagnoses of developmental disorders such as learning disabilities and ADHD; social malaise and old and new addictions; immigration and consequent integration issues.
Based on a consideration of these factors which call for further exploration and expansion of this discipline, Confiam perceives a pressing need to reflect on training courses in Italy. Now that Music Therapy training has gained access to institutional settings, there is an increasingly-urgent need to bring everybody concerned to the table, in order to define a consistent training programme throughout Italy, taking the most advanced schools in Europe as a benchmark.

[1] The first Confiam international conference was held in Trieste in 2006