Abstract
This paper is an abbreviated version of a longer study concerning the first fourteen music therapy sessions with a ten-year old girl displaying autistic tendencies.
The reason for the girl's referral for music therapy — and the main area of work during the sessions — was to help her in her difficulties in initiating, responding and maintaining an interactional activity wherein she could communicate her needs and desires.
The paper discusses how the girl's own spontaneous organisation of sound into bursts and pauses — with a longer general cessation marking her time of non-engagement —facilitated the evolution of an interactional musical relationship with the therapist within which she spontaneously communicated her affective experiences.
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