Benedikte B. Scheiby, MMA, MMEd, DPMT, CMT, LCAT, AMT

Director of Music Therapy Clinical Training and Supervision
Senior Clinician
CenterLight Health System

Internationally known and respected for her work in music psychotherapy with medical trauma, Benedikte Scheiby has been creating and implementing internship and training programs on behalf of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) and CenterLight Health System since 1996. In the vanguard of music therapy innovation since the 1980s, Scheiby left her native Denmark where, as a tenured professor in Aalborg University, she helped establish Bachelor through Doctoral degree Music Therapy training.

A recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Danish Humanistic Research Council Awards, Scheiby came to the United States in 1990 to research the area of music therapy: the complications and biases when the music therapist is both the clinician and the researcher in the same research project. By 1991, she joined New York University’s Music Therapy Masters Program as an adjunct assistant professor. By 1993, she joined the Art Therapy Masters Program at New York’s Pratt Institute as part of the adjunct faculty.

Scheiby speaks seven languages, a distinct asset as she travels and lectures extensively on music therapy and has presented at conferences and workshops throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and the Americas. Scheiby has also published 26 peer reviewed articles and book chapters in English, German, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Danish, has authored one book and co-produced one international DVD and one CD on music therapy education and training; music psychotherapy in medical trauma; music therapy research, and Analytical Music Therapy (AMT).

Indeed, Benedikte Scheiby is the only designated Analytical Music Therapy trainer in the United States who was personally trained by AMT’s founder, Mary Priestley. For the past 15 years she has also served as the director of a postgraduate AMT training institute in Manhattan.

Scheiby resides in Westchester County, NY with her husband, fellow music therapist, researcher and musician, Professor Kenneth S. Aigen and their two children. Scheiby plays a host of instruments from piano, cello and accordion to the North American Indian flute and an array of Asian percussion instruments. She enjoys traveling, hiking, kayaking and proudly includes climbing the six kilometers (3.72 miles) of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro among her accomplishments.