Some Considerations of a Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Music

Nass, Martin L.

doi:10.1080/21674086.1971.11926562

Cited by 27 publications

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“…During this phase, the musician tries to access every aspect of conscious and unconscious subjectivity. As Nass (1971) noted: "The musical experience allows precise and more ambiguous states of consciousness to emerge together" (308). Doubt, uncertainty, and confusion may trouble the musician, alternating with joy and exhilaration.…”

Section: The Practice Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

The Musician and the Creative Process

Hagman¹

2005

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynam

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Music is the embodiment through sound of lived experience. Conscious and unconscious modes of subjectivity are woven together in a tapestry of tone and sound, which is less about the world and more the symbolic equivalent of human subjectivity itself. Musicians through their interpretation of a composition invests their performance with self experience, and they come to experience themselves as vibrantly mirrored in the ideal form of the music. In other words, the musical performance is an opportunity for selfobject experience. Musical performance involves a two-phase process. The first is the practice phase, during which the musician seeks to achieve the experience of aesthetic resonance in which self-experience and music are brought into sync through the perfection of the performance. The dynamic role of selfobject failure and restoration in the musician's motivation to perfect the performance is stressed. The second phase is the public performance, during which the musician exhibits his or her ideal creation and experiences the mirroring of the audience. During these phases, there is a creative dialectic between internal and externalized aspects of self-experience. An examination of case material from analytic work with a musician shows how an inhibition in the creative process may be based on the expectation of selfobject failure, and how musical creativity can be facilitated through new opportunities for selfobject experience in the transference.

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Section: The Practice Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

The Musician and the Creative Process

Hagman¹

2005

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynam

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“…Others (Bonaparte 1933;Eissler 1963;Greenacre 1955) have used a psychobiographical approach in an attempt to understand the impact of specific artists' life experiences on the genesis of their creative impulse and the contents of their work. Ego psychologists have considered aspects of psychic structure and mechanisms that seem particularly prominent in creative individuals, and in so doing shifted the focus of attention to how the creative individual operates, rather than what determines the content of his work or impels him to creative activity (Gedo 1996;Giovacchini 1971;Kris 1952;Nass 1971;Noy 1979;Rose 1963Rose , 1964Weissman 1967Weissman , 1968.…”

Section: The Creative Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Psychic Organizations and Their Relation to Certain Aspects of the Creative Process

Zimmer¹

2010

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

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The author describes three different ways in which individuals in psychoanalysis may make use of the analyst. Each brings together affective and symbolic communication in a different way and draws the analyst into a different way of relating. It is suggested that these reflect three organizations of the individual's experience of the object and of himself in relation to the object. Though not encountered exclusively in creative artists, each of these organizations, which the author calls analyst-as-mental-function, analyst-as-medium, and analyst-as-audience/ interlocutor, is related to a specific aspect of the creative process.

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“…Music functioned as one of many overdetermined elements that served as instruments of intrapsychic change. Analysis of her humming allowed Ms. O to achieve greater psychic integration and ego mastery (see Nass 1971;Noy 1966Noy , 1967aNoy , 1967bNoy , 1967cNoy , 1967d.…”

Section: Ms Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the latter, I analyzed a piano composition (without programmatic implications, such as in Peter and the Wolf, or a libretto that blends words and music, such as in operas) that was composed during the sum-mer of 1778-the tumultuous year of Mozart's mother's deathand I maintained, as did Mozart himself, that he expressed himself in sound. 4 More common in the literature is the application of psychoanalytic ideas to composers themselves (see Diaz de Chumaceiro 1993;Marshall 1993;Nass 1990;Ostwald 1990), and/or to individuals' reactions to music, such as the role of music in mourning (Stein 2004) and the sounds of memory (Stein 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Music: an Intersection on the Oral and Aural Road

Nagel

2008

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

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This paper is organized around two ideas. The first invites the reader to consider the importance of music in emotional life, suggesting that for some people, music can have profound, deep, and transformative effects, both in loosening defenses and in deepening the psychoanalytic experience. The second idea is that analysis of the formal properties of music have both specific and overdetermined meanings that share elements with psychoanalytic principles. I suggest that, if the verbal analysis of dreams paves a royal road to the unconscious, the formal properties of music provide an aural road to the same destination. Two clinical vignettes and scenes from Verdi's opera Otello are used to illustrate these interrelated ideas.

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Some Considerations of a Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Music

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

The Musician and the Creative Process

The Musician and the Creative Process

Three Psychic Organizations and Their Relation to Certain Aspects of the Creative Process

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Music: an Intersection on the Oral and Aural Road

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