Melodies in My Mind: the Polyphony of Mental Life

Abstract

MELODIES IN MY MIND: THE POLYPHONY OF MENTAL LIFED elivering the Gertrude and Ernst Ticho Memorial Lecture today is a deeply personal honor and a professional milestone. To be respected by colleagues, appreciated by friends, and loved by one's family is sufficient reward for anyone. Today I have the additional privilege of sharing with you my thoughts about music and psychoanalysis. The Ticho Lectureship acknowledges early-to mid-career psychoanalysts; this recognition raises an interesting paradox. Implied in the designation "early-to mid-career" is the notion that a person younger than myself would receive this award. In the context of age and career, when I talk with analytic colleagues, of all ages and from various cities (and also when reading data in the report on APsaA's 2006 Survey of Analytic Practice [Brauer, Brauer, and Falk 2008] before the recent recession), questions are raised about the average age of analysts, attracting candidates, unwelcome open hours in analytic schedules, and compromised incomes. My musician colleagues (supported by recent data from the National Endowment for the Arts) express concern about "graying audiences" and the future of classical music. (For clarification, I use the term classical music in this paper to refer to tonal, harmonic music in the Western compositional tradition. West Side Story, the focus of my musical example later in my lecture, is steeped in that tradition.) Qualms about the future of psychoanalysis and the diminishing concert-attending public are not based in illusion; both concerns reflect realities and anxieties but also challenges and opportunities, regardless of birthdates and stages in a career. While there are nonclassical musics and various approaches to psychoanalytic practice, the questions remain: