Medicine and music: three relations considered.
Two well-recognised, but inherently reductionist, relations between medicine and music are the attempted neuro-scientific understanding of responses to music and interest in music's contributions to clinical therapy. This paper proposes a third relation whereby music is seen as an organising metaphor for clinical medicine as a practice. Both music and clinical medicine affirm human well-being, and both do this inter alia through varieties of skilful, crafted yet spontaneous mutual engagement between a 'performer' and an 'audience'. I argue that this organising metaphor offers a corrective to the reductionist influences of the first two relations, illuminates a number of medicine's important features, and reaffirms the existential as being at the core of medicine's telos.
Evans
H M
HM
Centre for Arts and Humanities in Health and Medicine, Durham University, Room 323 Dawson Building, Science Site, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK. h.m.evans@durham.ac.uk
D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D019365:Metaphor; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology*; D009147:Music Therapy; D010684:Philosophy