ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study of relationships between music and disease, more specifically between the perception, expression and representation of music by schizophrenic persons. The principal focus of the music therapy was interpersonal contact, the aim being a reduction of negative symptoms and an enhanced quality of life. In the self-assessment scale, music therapy was perceived by the patients as having positive effects on their contact with other people. Fundamental assumptions and hypotheses were based upon the observations and research results from music therapy available to that date. The experimental investigation was meant to compare musical representation, interaction and perception of paranoid schizophrenic patients with that of healthy controls. There were eight operationalised interaction items to be categorised: "offering", "imitating", "interrupting", "isolating oneself", "repeating", "insisting", "fragmenting" and "dominating". Other pieces of music were very long, and the study subjects changed their manner of playing during a presentation, so that various emotional impressions arose in the raters.
