Ep 21 Andy Lale

In episode 21 of Music Therapy Conversations Luke Annesley talks
to Andy Lale. Andy has worked as a music therapist for twenty
years. He has been employed by CNWL NHS Trust, in this capacity,
since 1999. He manages a team of arts psychotherapists for South
Westminster and specialises in music psychotherapy with psychotic
states. His clinical work, with this client group, focuses on
transference and insight. His MA dissertation
on Countertransference Enactment is available in the
Tavistock Library. He has taught on the MA in Music Therapy at
Roehampton University and now supervises other clinicians in this
compound intervention. He also contributes to the ICAPT evening
lecture series. Andy has created a series of online
videos explaining the key ideas of this way of working. This
study is an attempt to encourage interest more widely, in
psychoanalytically informed music psychotherapy, for psychosis.
Andy presented this study at the BAMT conference, 2018.​


In this interview, Andy talks about the origin of the term
'psychodynamics', and in some detail about how he applies
psychodynamic theory to his work as a music psychotherapist with
psychotic patients. What is the relationship between music and
psychodynamic theory? We also discuss the anti-psychiatry
movement, and the difficulties of research and evaluation of
music psychotherapy with this client group. And what about 'music
psychotherapy' itself? Why is there not yet a well-established
post-qualification training in music psychotherapy in the UK?