Psychoanalysis and music

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.

[3] 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.

Within a few years several studies were published by the French André Michel (1951), Ernst Kris (1952), Anton Ehrenzweig (1953), Theodor Reik (1953), and others.

[11] He did demonstrate that songs on the mind could be effectively interacted with in a psychotherapeutic fashion in a way that helped resolve repressed conflict.

[12] The flow of studies and articles from the latter part of the twentieth century was summarised in the two-volume essay collection Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music (1990–1993).

Relational improvisation is a listeners ability to remember certain stories form their past and resonate them to the lyrics and schematic patterns of a song.

One case study in particular, from Anne Cowles and several other authors, shows how a patient that had just been diagnosed with dementia was able to learn a new song to play on the violin.

[21] He initially began with a very angry and threatening attitude, but as the sessions continued, the therapist was able to attune with the patient and make progress.

[21] Although the patient was unable to succeed in breaking most of his habits of threatening behavior, the therapist was able to connect better with him because of music[21] A case study was held involving five children diagnosed with autism.

[24] Elaborating on this idea, psychoanalyst Gilbert Rose argues that our responsiveness to music begins with the nonverbal emotional rapport of the earliest infant–parent interplay.

[25] Reaching back even further, since the fetus has an active auditory system 3–4 months before birth, the rhythm of the mothers womb and the sound of her heartbeat could be the start of our responsiveness to music.

According to Tawaststjerna, the Symphony reflects the psychoanalytical and introspective era when Freud and Henri Bergson stressed the meaning of the unconscious.

"[31] Another speculated candidate for psychoanalytically inspired composition is the monodrama Erwartung, composed by Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, 1909.

In his writings, Schoenberg presented his views on aesthetics: ideally, art is intuitive expression of unconscious sensations.