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Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music.

Author: Emerson, Isabelle

Article Type: Book Review

Date: Mar 1, 1994

Words: 2171Publication: Notes

ISSN: 0027-4380

Third in a series of volumes dedicated to applied psychoanalysis, PsychoanalyticExplorations in Music is the first such collection on musical subjects. Research into the rolesand manners of music perception, training, and especially creation may surely offer dynamicand productive pathways to a greater understanding of the workings of mind and body andthus prove beneficial to the psychoanalyst as well as the musician. But, although the idea of

investigating music using psychoanalytic techniques goes back to the early years of thiscentury, to Sigmund Freud's own Psychological Wednesday Society which included amongits members the musicologist Max Graf, the editors of this anthology believe that music hasnot received the attention given by psychoanalytical theorists to the literary and visual arts.As Dane Harwood recently pointed out, however, in a review of Jeanne Bamberger's TheMind behind the Musical Ear: How Children Develop Musical Intelligence (Notes 49[1992--93]: 940--44), a great deal of work has been devoted during the last thirty years to thepsychology of music--the processes of musical perception, learning, performance,comparison of these processes with those involved in other skills, and so on (see Harwood'sexcellent overview of the l iterature, pp. 940--41).

Psychoanalytic Explorations was not intended to establish a methodology for psychoanalyticapplications to music. Rather, the editors have provided a compendium of essays thatrepresent the types of work done between 1950 and 1986. The essays are organized in fourcategories, forming a logical progression from the perception of music by listeners throughthe development of musical ability and the psychology of composition/creation, tobiographical studies of individual composers.

The essays in the first three sections are presented in chronological order, so that the readergains a sense of development and change in application of psychoanalytic theory. Thusearlier essays speak preponderantly of music as id-dominated, musical enjoyment resulting

from a permitted regression to earlier states of development; later essays emphasizeconcepts of ego psychology.

Many of the essays in Psychoanalytic Explorations show exciting possibilities for achievingnew understanding of the essential processes of music, both with respect to its creation andits reception. Marjorie McDonald has studied the work of the Suzuki school and suggestedthat music may operate for the musically sensitive child as a transitional object (like a blanketor teddy bear) during the shift from concentration on the world within to awareness of theexternal world. Pinchas Noy, agreeing with Freud that the latent meaning of all art reduces tobasic motives and conflicts common to all humanity, concludes that the elementdistinguishing perfect and good art must then be form. He sets up a model for the relation of

id and ego (content is to form as id is to ego, super ego, and reality) and proposesexplanations of good and perfect form involving the extent and success of the ego'sexpression and organization of materials. In a perceptive study of Richard Wagner's Tristanund Isolde that speaks to both musicians and psychoanalysts, Richard Chessick reviews

choanalytic Explorations in Music. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=15109181

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various approaches by psychologists and philosophers to Wagner's transfiguration of his lovefor Mathilde Wesendonck. Wagner has shown with unspeakable power the pain and rage ofthis passion and the suffering that must be relieved even if the only relief is death; thegreatness of his work, writes Chessick, is that it produces empathy for the victims, anempathy that should carry over to the clinical situation for psychoanalysts working with suchvictims.

Problems arise however with more specific applications of psychoanalytic methods. Noysuggests elsewhere that the threatening effect of Beethoven's famous four-note motive in theFifth Symphony is due to its resemblance to a scolding mother --several quick repetitionsusually in a high tone followed by a long, usually lower tone. Fugue is analogous to a toddlerstumbling along independently followed at a short distance by its caring mother; thepleasure in hearing the fugue derives from the evocation of those early simultaneous feelingsof independence and security. Stuart Feder, drawing upon musical as well as biographicaldata, proposes an unusually close and exclusive attachment between Charles Ives and hisfather George, a relationship that seems to endow the father with both materinal andpaternal capabilities. Feder deduces from various written and spoken statements that "for allhumanistic intents and purposes, [Ives] presents himself as if born of man]" (p. 144). The

organ that makes this possible is a "shared male organ"--the ear: "In its starkest form, [Ives's]fantasy of origin was that of immaculate conception in and through this ear" (p. 148). Leavingaside the possible objection that females, too, have ears and often very musical ones, Federpounds home his point: "The Ivesian ear is a shared, masculine organ; it is virile and potentyet tenderly receptive to its own kind. Both phallic and vaginal, it can give it, and it can takeit" (p. 155). In other words, this "uniquely bisexual organ" can imagine and send(disseminate!) sound, functioning thus phallically, but, since it also receives sound,functioning vaginally as well. Feder's reasonable, often illuminating examination of Ives'sconstitutional gifts and environment loses credibility when it becomes overly specific, whetherbiographically or musically. Is, for example, Charles Ives hearing through George's ears inthe Violin Sonatas as Feder claims, or is he re-creating accurately his own memories of camp

meetings? Is the use of cornet and violins always an identification with George, or is it afondness for the timbre? --a fondness that may well have its origins in childhood experiencesbut that does not have to be a pathological evocation of "Father." Need a reference toanother style and to another early figure be "a displacement from George" (p. 166), or can itbe just what it sounds like--a reference to country fiddle-playing?

My criticism is not meant to lessen the importance of George Ives's influence on his son or todenigrate Feder's thorough and often penetrating work. I do wish however to point out thedangers of such overspecificity in discussing matters that must remain open to speculation.Such overspecificity in the psychoanalytic approach to music and to (dead) musicians fails in

much the same way that music itself fails when attempting to be too specific--think of FranzLiszt's tone poem Mazeppa which portrays the sound of the galloping horse so accuratelythat with repetition it becomes ludicrous, and we the listeners, trapped in the mundane, losesight of the grand conception. Similarly, caught up in the idea of Ives's oversexed ear, wemay discount the insights offered into the make-up and creativity of this singular genius.

Feder's essay exemplifies both the merits and the problems of Psychoanalytic Explorations.The desire to explain and to understand the workings of art is profoundly appealing. But atthe same time such explications must be firmly grounded in verifiable evidence. JacquesBarzun has warned in Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History & History([Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974], 45) of the dangers of permitting surmise to

appear as fact, of relying on such "weasel words" as "must have," "it would seem," "may wenot believe." Pointing out that psychohistorians "see others moved by unconscious forcesthat distort vision and compel strange behavior," he questions why their own "vision ofpersons and events [is] not blurred and skewed as well, and their interpretations forced upon


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them by dark needs rather than evidential reasons" (p. 48). Careful documentation is crucialin investigations like the ones offered in Psychoanalytic Explorations--and unfortunatelydocumentation is inconsistent and is occasionally omitted entirely. ("Many of theconversations were on music, Otto frequently provocative in his comments, Gustav [Mahler]at times lecturing" [Feder, p. 351]; this may be accurate, but no evidence is given to supportthe descriptions.)

Some essays are excellent; a few should have been excluded. Maynard Solomon's essay onMozart's Zoroastrian riddles, for example, is careful, insightful, and convincing. Solomondistinguishes painstakingly between fact and supposition, writing "I hypothesize" or "it seemsto me," avoiding "it may have been" or "it must have been," etc. He makes the excellent pointthat the artist's experiences, drives, motivations are apt to be hidden in the art and be thusunavailable to anyone else; this disguise is in fact a sign of the successful work. The riddlesare incomplete, unsuccessful even, sublimations, and therefore revealing. Mozart surelythought he was just having fun, but Solomon shows quite convincingly that the composerpresented "free associational products of his imagination, symbols to which are bondedfragments of a hidden life" (p. 421). This is psycho-musicological detective work of highquality. The same cannot be said for Aaron Esman's 1951 study of Mozart. It relies

exclusively on sources available in English (ignoring such respectable, fundamental Germanwork as that of Otto Jahn and Hermann Abert or the German edition of Mozart's lettersprepared by Ludwig Schiedermair) and is not really of much value today--historically or, Iwould think, psychoanalytically. He stresses Mozart's anal language but does not refer to theoriginal German, nor does he mention that Mozart's mother also enjoyed anal vocabulary (asin her letter to her husband of 26 September 1777, "adio ben mio leb gesund, Reck denarsch zum mund, ich winsch ein guete nacht, scheiss ins beth das Kracht; see Mozart: Briefeund Aufzeichnungen, vol. 2 [Kassel: Barenreiter, 1962], 14 [letter no. 333]). His finding of aproductive link between creativity and castration anxiety, which can partially explain "the fargreater incidence in our culture of artistic creativity among men than women" (p. 397), will beof interest to all modern women.

Although two women have contributed three essays, the book is dominated by male subjectsand terminology. Thus even though when Clara Wieck played a defective piano "her fatherfunctioned, in effect, as part of her instrument" (Anna Burton, p. 108), she nonetheless"functioned as an extension of her father--symbolically, as a phallic supplement" (Burton, p.109). Wieck is the only female musician studied; most essays refer exclusively to males, andonly occasionally is "he" broadened to include "she." Music, long attributed with the power ofexpressing emotion--woman's realm after all?--would seem an obvious and rich arena forpsychoanalytical forays into investigations of gender significance.

In a collection intended "to provide an up-to-date compendium of representative articles" (p.xiv), one might expect to find a broader selection: in a total of twenty-two essays by fourteenauthors, six authors are represented by two articles, two authors by three. The book overallwould profit by greater consistency in such matters as inclusion of summaries at the ends ofessays, adherence to conventions of capitalization in various languages, cross-references.Several articles should have been vigorously edited; condensed, awkward writing improved;annoying repetitions and jargon eliminated; grammar corrected (e.g., "this data" [p. 446] and"the self and its component parts ... is" [p. 195]). Careful proofreading might have caughtmisspellings and even an apparently misplaced paragraph (p. 203). Misprints occur--curiously, many of them in the three essays by one of the general editors, Stuart Feder. Theumlaut is particularly abused: not only is it misplaced (so that Trauerlied becomes Trauerlied

[p. 205]), but it appears only sporadically in the list of references, so that the reader is treatedto Hollander, Tannhauser, Walkure, Vom Musikalisch-Schonen, and may well chuckle overthe entry for H. Keller's "Die Gluckliche Hand and Other Errors." Perhaps inevitably, a fewmusical solecisms creep in: for example, a reference to the third as the "most stable


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configuration in music" (Schwartz, note, p. 438).

Many of the authors admit the difficulties of interpreting with words an art that is nonverbaland of applying psychoanalytic interview techniques to a person who can never be spokenwith directly. A major problem however in such an interdisciplinary effort is the lack ofspecialized knowledge of both disciplines. Ideally, the investigator should be skilled in musicand in psychology. This is rarely the case. The collaboration of psychologist and musicologistwould help to avoid pitfalls of misinformation, misunderstanding, and naivete.

Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music is strongest when authors explore within their ownexpertise the processes and effects of this nonverbal art. Several authors compare Freud'srecommendation concerning listening to patients--with a completely open mind and receptiveto all levels of communication (e.g., literal words, subconscious meanings, bodylanguage)--to the ideal state of listening to music. Martin Nass cites Suzanne Langer's beliefthat the power of music lies in its ability--widely recognized in the nineteenth century--to "be'true' to the life of feeling in a way that language cannot" (p. 40). If this be so, then perhapsthe appropriate task for psychoanalysis is to examine the processes by which the messageexpressed by music is sent and received rather than try to translate the message. The

strongest essays in this collection labor in precisely this direction. All in all, PsychoanalyticExplorations provides an instructive overview of applications to music of psychoanalyticmethods; the most provocative essays indicate the possibilities for expanding through thedisciplines of psychoanalysis and music our knowledge of the workings of the mind.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Music Library Association, Inc.

Copyright 1994 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.


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