Music has always played an important role in the field of the arts: just think of the musical accompaniment in the Greek theater, which intensifies the dramatic effect of the word (evocative of images) and gesture (which instead ideally put the images in motion themselves) in order to amplify the interaction with the spectators. Those who are physically and / or mentally ill do nothing but interrupt a communication process both with the external world and with itself. Contacts and normal relationships with the environment are impaired and the individual gradually achieves such isolation as to become a stranger to himself. The sick subject sinks more and more into a blanket of thick fog where perceptive, intellectual and emotional processes are altered. External reality often becomes something unknown and threatening, something that no longer reflects its inner world and / or vice versa. Music can help explore, dispel this fog, and facilitate the acquisition and development of knowledge of self and others . In this context it is important to mention the primary therapeutic element that is needed in music therapy: the relational element . In psychodynamics we could say that the person does not exist outside the relationship. The therapist listens to both the music that is improvised by the patient and the person in the music. We could then still say that the person " is " the music instead of the person is " in " the music. Music is not about the person, but is the person himself. The therapist relates to the patient as a musician places himself in front of a musical score and tries to read, interpret, the music inscribed in his person. The unconscious, in fact, is not directly contactable but needs a symbolic - metaphorical mediator who "means" (from meaning) and reveals its shadow side. According to a Jungian consideration, there are archetypal structures, recurrent in dreams and common in myths, which give access to the collective level of the human psyche. According to Jung, this level remains healthy even in subjects with mental disorders. In the context of a rehabilitation program we can, therefore, reactivate a dialogue with the healthy part of the person, going to contact this level. The archetype, the dream, the creative images of our mind, are the metaphorical mediators of our unconscious and the therapist must know how to evoke and capture the images and the emotional contents corresponding to them, which music generates in a music therapy process. The use of images and music make it possible to act and represent the mental and emotional processes that accompany the transformative path towards its evolution. It is easier for our thoughts to follow an emotion than to precede it so it is important to act on the emotional dimension. Music therapy refers to a set of ideas and practices united by the conviction that the experience with sound, if properly guided, can have preventive, rehabilitative and curative functions and a personal and professional training resource. One of the definitions of Music Therapy reads as follows: "Music therapy means the use of active musical experiences (in which music is produced by cultivating the creative expression of individual or group in a perspective of socializing communication) or" passive "(in which music predominates 'listening or taking rhythmic-musical stimuli). These experiences are aimed at the recovery, re-socialization, social integration of people, adults or children, suffering from handicaps of different types that limit their relational and social expression ". The pivot of music therapy is the " interpersonal process " based on the relationship expressed within the process itself, through sound and music that draws on the sound-musical identity ( ISO ) of the individual or group [1].

I thank Giacomo Cassano, Musician and Music Therapist for the theoretical information and for the practical experience of Music Therapy.

[1] ISO: concept coined by OR Benenzon that represents the individual musical sound history of the subject ("archetype") which has its roots since the prenatal period (and natal, then) at the level of global perceptions and sensations and becomes an integral part of the growth process.