This paper is devoted to the study of internally generated auditory imagery, specifically tunes that appear spontaneously in one's consciousness exclusive of external musical input. Melodies that appear in the periphery of one's awareness during directed activity can protect the ego from the interference of internal desires or demands. Music present in consciousness irrespective of any specific melody may be experienced as a protective, omnipotent parental companion and thus guard against danger and the painful loneliness of separation and loss. The frequent or continuous spontaneous appearance of music in one's consciousness is considered to be a characterological mode of thinking—thinking in music.
After decades of heeding Freud's admonition against taking patients older than fifty years of age into psychoanalytic treatment, psychoanalysts began to treat them and to report encouraging experiences. This essay is another in a series of case reports that confirms and extends the nature of changes possible in the analytic treatment of elderly patients. In order to demonstrate both specific changes and the possibility of satisfactory terminations with patients of advanced age, the author describes his analytic work with a woman who first consulted him when she was sixty-eight years old.
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