The music of therapy

Abstract

‘Pictures are forming inside my brain Soon with the colours they’ll rain together and grow Then don’t you know, don’t you know, there’ll be music.’From ‘Music’ by Carole King.To explore individual narratives of a therapist’s route to entering the profession, I undertook a self-critical analysis of personal experiences, emotional understandings, and meaning making of my life prior to becoming a counselling psychologist. Pathways to entering a psychotherapeutic profession are nuanced, and idiosyncratic, so rather than the ubiquitous ‘wounded healer’ narrative being the sole applicable metaphor for my life journey, I draw out another metaphor more pertinent to my particular experience: the music of therapy.