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Concept
Psychoanalysis and music
Summary
According to some music therapists, the use of Music in the therapeutic environment has an affinity with psychoanalysis in that it addresses obstructions in the mind that might be causing stress, psychic tension, and even physical illness. Music has been used, in conjunction with a psychoanalytic approach, to address symptoms of a variety of mental disorders, as well as forms of emotional distress, such as grief, loss, mourning, and trauma.
Sigmund Freud discussed shortly some musical phenomena in his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), but he was more interested in other arts, especially literature and the visual arts.
Freud’s attitude toward music was ambivalent. He described himself as being "ganz unmusikalisch" (totally unmusical). Despite his much-protested resistance, he could enjoy certain operas such as Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro and he used musical metaphors in the context of theory and therapy.
Freud seemed to feel uneasy without a guide from the more rational part. To be emotionally moved by something without knowing what was moving him or why (to be more precise, the word used in German in the famous article The Moses of Michelangelo was 'ergreift', as if music could grab or hold) and this was an intrinsically anxious experience. The operas he listened were "conversational" and "narrative" forms of music, which is theorized, provided him with some kind of "cognitive control" over the emotional impact of the musical sounds. Cheshire argued that maybe he was jealous and feared the potential therapeutic power of music as a rival to psychoanalysis. To acknowledge the power of music to grab and to hold (ergreifen) was, no doubt, the first gesture towards a definition of the Unconscious in Music. Freud made an incredible contribution to the field, even without taking notice of it.
It was up to other early psychoanalysts than Freud to initiate a serious psychoanalytic study of musical phenomena. First of them was the musicologist and critic Max Graf (1873–1958) who presented his views in the "Wednesday meetings" in 1905–1912.
Official source
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