Book Review: "Acting Your Inner Music" by Joseph J. Moreno

After years of sitting on my music therapy bookshelf, I was recently motivated to read the book "Acting Your Inner Music: Music Therapy and Psychodrama" by Joseph J. Moreno. I must be candid up front that Joe Moreno was the director of the music therapy program at Maryville University Saint Louis when I was an undergraduate student. Therefore, the information in this text was a thorough review of information I learned directly from Joe in core curriculum music therapy courses.

The book provides a well-balanced overview of music therapy, healing, creative arts therapy, and psychodrama. The author is the nephew of Jacob L. Moreno, who originated the concept of healing psychodrama. The author describes his creation of an integrative form of therapy combining psychodrama and music therapy: musical psychodrama. Moreno defines musical psychodrama as "the integration of music improvisation, imagery, and other music therapy techniques with traditional actional psychodrama in order to realize an expanded approach that transcends the possibilities of either method used separately."

Creative arts therapies (music, art, drama, psychodrama, poetry, etc.) can elicit responses that verbal therapy techniques cannot. The nonverbal communication that improvisational music therapy can facilitate naturally leads the the enactment of psychodrama. Moreno describes in the book about techniques specific to psychodrama and music therapy, respectively, and then explains how the two can be linked together. He describes specific techniques that can be used in the music therapy setting including, musical role reversal, musical dialogue, musical closure, music and the divided self, musical modeling, and musical doubling. Moreno discussed how music can assist individuals in expressing their emotions more readily and with less inhibition than using words and language.

For me, this book was easy to follow and to understand both psychodrama, music therapy and their integration into musical psychodrama. However, I would advise that if there is no prior knowledge of either psychodrama or music therapy, the reader should gain a general knowledge of both before delving into this advanced text.