On the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and
2.3 Music in the margin of psychoanalytic criticism and psychoanalytic criticism in the margin of musicology
2.3.1 The “invisibility” of psychoanalytic music research and the LGHRORJLHVRIPXVLFRORJ\:KR¶VDIUDLGRIPXVLFDOUHSUHVHQWDWLRQ"
Psychoanalytic theories have been applied to the study of culture and arts throughout the history of psychoanalysis. Often, when a new psychoanalytic theory is invented, it is soon applied to art research. Psychoanalytic art research, HVSHFLDOO\RIOLWHUDWXUHDQG¿OPVLQFHWKHV±VKDVGHYHORSHGLQQRYDWLYH PHWKRGVIRULWVRZQSXUSRVHVDQGKDVLQÀXHQFHGFXOWXUDOFULWLFLVPLQJHQHUDO which clearly indicates the change in emphasis from applied psychoanalysis to psychoanalytic criticism. This development has had an impact on general psycho-
analysis as well, especially certain trends in French and feminist psychoanalysis.
Along with Lacan-driven poststructuralism and deconstruction, psychoanalysis itself has been subjected to literary critique, for the tricks of the unconscious are working in all texts and thus in psychoanalytic literature also.
As already noted, university departments of music, musicology, and music history have largely shunned psychoanalytic methods, which have not obtained as established a position in music curricula as they have in departments of litera-
ture and visual culture. Correspondingly, music has not been the chief concern among psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic theorists of arts and culture. Music research lacks classics of psychoanalytic interpretations on a par with Freud’s Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dostoyevsky, Hoffmann, and Gradiva analyses, and Lacan’s Poe or Antigone analyses, to name but a few;; such classics could have sparked and sustained a research tradition. If Freud had written even a tiny study on 0R]DUWRU:DJQHUZRXOGDFORVHUUHODWLRQVKLSEHWZHHQPXVLFUHVHDUFKDQG SV\FKRDQDO\VLVKDYHGHYHORSHG"
Music has been discriminated against in psychoanalytic criticism – to judge from comparison with psychoanalytic approaches found in the vast amount of pages addressing literature and visual arts by notable psychoanalysts, philoso-
phers, semioticians, and art researchers.27 This tradition starts with Freud and is still alive, for example, in current psychoanalytic philosophy and semiotics.
This can be seen as one expression of the visual sphere predominating over the auditory sphere. The auditory mode of being in subject’s life – and the audi-
tory sphere of human existence in general – has received little attention. Freud and Lacan, for instance, concentrate almost exclusively on the role of visual and verbal imagination in psychic life. The auditory and sonorous dimensions of dream symbolization (this being the central object of psychoanalysis), for 27 Noy was already complaining about the matter nearly forty years ago (1966: 126).
instance, have not received much attention. Yet should not audiophilia be placed, DWOHDVWRQDSDUZLWKVFRSRSKLOLD",WLVWHOOLQJWKDWWKHPRVWSURIRXQGSV\FKRDQD-
O\WLFLQVLJKWVLQWRWKHDXGLWRU\UHDOPRIWKHVXEMHFWKDYHGHYHORSHGLQ¿OPVWXGLHV (e.g., Silverman 1988) rather than in musicology28 – and all this despite the fact that Freud discovered a new way of listening.29
Stuart Feder (1993a: 15;; see also, Stein 1999: 396) states that the visual bias of psychoanalysis may be one reason why sensible psychoanalytic approaches to music have gone underdeveloped. More often, however, the reason has been thought to lie in the supposed “nature” of music, which, considered in its non-
verbal, temporal, and abstract essence, is adjudged non-representational (non-
¿JXUDWLYH$FFRUGLQJWR5LFKDUGSterba (1965: 97;; see also, Feder et al. 1990:
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the familiar and crucial psychoanalytic categories of manifest (conscious) versus latent (unconscious) content “cannot be applied in the realm of music, where the work of art is not a copy of reality”. This kind of thinking holds the position that, in music, unambiguous meanings of the manifest (pheno)level cannot be named directly, as can the denotations of natural (verbal) language. From this, the judg-
ment has been made that, in music, there is nothing behind which to look for latent (hidden) meanings, the revealing thematics cherished by psychoanalysis.
Pinchas Noy (1993: 125–126;; see also, Stein 1999) criticizes psychoanalytic criticism for being too stuck on the archaeological model of revealing thematics, i.e., an interpretative reconstruction of hidden narrative. Contrary to what one might expect from a psychoanalyst, Noy’s critique does not target the conception RIPXVLFDVDEVWUDFWQRQUHSUHVHQWDWLYHQRQ¿JXUDWLYHDQGODFNLQJLQFRQWHQWV (semantics, meanings), and the unconscious motives and psychodynamics inher-
ent in this conception. This is because Noy represents an ego-psychology tradi-
tion of music research, which is colored by modernist aesthetics. According to the latter, psychoanalytic music research should turn its ears to the formal aspects of music about which psychoanalysis, according to Noy, has been unable to say anything pertinent before the advent of ego-psychology. Noy writes: “form too 28 Here we may also see why research on opera has been much more open to psychoanal-
ysis than have the other genres of music. This is true because the strong visual and verbal dimensions in opera make plain the semantics of the work;; moreover, opera research, especially in the wake of feminist thought in musicology, has drawn much inspiration and PHWKRGRORJ\IURP¿OPVWXGLHVD¿HOGSHUYDGHGE\SV\FKRDQDO\WLFIHPLQLVWDQGVHPLRWL-
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29 See Barthes (1985: 255–257) for an interesting account of psychoanalytic listening.
On Freud’s relation to music and neglect of the auditory realm of the subject, see Lecourt 1992;; Cheshire 1996;; Caïn & Caïn 1982;; Rosolato 1982;; Chumaceiro 1993;; Abrams 1993;; and Klempe 1998.
may represent in some cases an unconscious content” (1993: 126).30 Still, his suggestion to focus on musical forms as unconscious contents does not mean WR H[DPLQH VSHFL¿F ZRUNV RI PXVLF 1R\¶V VWXGLHV VWD\ DW WKH JHQHUDO PXVLF psychological level. Most often Noy contemplates musicality, creativity, and the emotional effects of music from a psychodynamic perspective and at a very gen-
eral level. A sympathizer with Susanne Langer and Carroll Pratt’s isomorphism theory, Noy sees music as conveying operational structures of psychical pro-
FHVVHVEXWQRWVSHFL¿FFRQWHQWVWKDWFDQEHLGHQWL¿HGDQGQDPHG:HVHHWKDWWKH modernist notion of “form-as-content” does not get us very far in psychoanalytic music analysis.
0RUH LQWHUHVWLQJO\ 1R\ HDUOLHU LGHQWL¿HG D ODWHQW GLVFLSOLQDU\ UHVLVWDQFH to psychoanalytic music studies as one reason for the lack of psychoanalytic engagements with music (1966: 127). Noy refers to Kleinian psychoanalyst Heinrich Racker (1951), who attributed – as new musicologists decades later did – the neglect of music in psychoanalytic literature to “an unconscious resistance inherent in the emotional quality of the effect of music”.
Ego-psychological music research has often accepted the modernist ideology RIPXVLFDVQRQ¿JXUDWLYHDQGQRQUHSUHVHQWDWLYH7KLVLGHDRI“absolute music”
sprang from and extended one strand of the heterogeneous Romantic aesthetics;;
the aesthetics of autonomy opposed programme music, literary subjects, and the socio-cultural use of music. This is not a question of ideology as related to psy-
choanalytic or ego-psychological thinking, but as related to modernist aesthet-
ics, musicology, and music philosophy, which, in psychoanalytic jargon, have remained in “denial” of musical semantics. The popularity of the ego-psycho-
logical perspective in psychoanalytic music research (cf., e.g., Feder et al., eds.
1990 and 1993) might partly be explained by the fact that, of all the paradigms RISV\FKRDQDO\VLVLW¿WVPRVWVQXJO\±ERWKKLVWRULFDOO\DQGLGHRORJLFDOO\±ZLWK the modernist ideals of abstract “Art” and “Form”.31:HPD\DVNLIERWKHJR psychology and modernist aesthetics are indulging in the kind of repression that robs music of semantics and thus sexuality, affects, emotions, and other aspects of the unconscious. This matter is paradoxical, in the sense that one would expect WKDWSV\FKRDQDO\VWVLQSDUWLFXODUZRXOGVWRSWRUHÀHFWRQWKHGRPLQDQWRSLQ-
LRQWKDWPXVLFLVQRQ¿JXUDWLYHDQGQRQUHSUHVHQWDWLYHLQQDWXUHDQGWRLQTXLUH LQWRWKHXQFRQVFLRXVLQWHQWLRQWKDWWKLVLGHRORJ\VDWLV¿HV:K\IRULQVWDQFHKDV
30 Ego-psychology is explained in more detail in Chap. 3.4.2.
7KHUHDUHPDQ\NLQGVRIHJRSV\FKRORJ\7KHVLJQL¿FDQWDQWKRORJLHVRI)HGHUHWDO (eds.) 1990 and 1993 are related to a research circle in the American Psychoanalytic Asso-
ciation, called Psychoanalytic Perspectives in Music, and to the Music and Mind project (see http://www.mindandmusic.org [18.5.2005]).
PRGHUQLVWPXVLFDQDO\VLVDQGWKHRU\H[FOXGHGWKHVHPDQWLFVRIPXVLF"32:KDW UHSUHVVLRQ LV LQ TXHVWLRQ KHUH" 'R VHPDQWLFV LFRQRJUDSK\ DQG V\PEROLVP RI PXVLFWKUHDWHQDQ\RQHRUDQ\WKLQJ"
From the point of view of psychoanalytic semiotics, all meaning systems KDYHFRQWHQWIRUQRGLVFRXUVHFDQEHSURGXFHGZLWKRXWVLJQL¿FDWLRQDQGVXEMHFW But certainly a naïve concept of content or meaning has to be rejected33 – as ardu-
ously argued in general semiotics during the last two decades. Unquestionably there are different modes and levels of articulation in musical discourse, but all of these articulations are understood together as music only because of the system of musical signs as cultural practice with that system’s conventions and codes.
This means that modernist ideas of non-representativeness, lack of content, and
“Art as Form” have to be represented (transmitted) in modernist (“abstract”) works of art in order for these works to be received or understood as such (as
³PRGHUQLVW´³$UW´³DEVWUDFW´³QRQ¿JXUDWLYH´DQGVRIRUWK34 From a semioti-
cal point of view, we have to examine how modernist music represents the idea of non-representation. The same goes for the idea of absolute music, for instance, which marks only one aesthetic convention and invention of the nineteenth cen-
tury among many others (e.g., programme music). Absolute music represents the semantics of a-semanticism (cf. Kuusamo 1996: 118), i.e., the ideology of
32 However, as Richard /LWWOH¿HOG SRLQWHG RXW WR PH SULYDWH FRPPXQLFDWLRQ UHIHU-
ring to Richard Cohn, the question could also be put otherwise – depending on how one GH¿QHVWKHH[SUHVVLRQ³PXVLFWKHRU\´DQGHYHQ³VHPDQWLFV´$FFRUGLQJWR&RKQPRVW of the history of music theory does not deal with semantics since that is not its primary IRFXV0XVLFWKHRU\EHJDQLQDEVWUDFWPDWKHPDWLFVDQGTXDQWL¿FDWLRQDQGODWHUDVUXOHV for composition. This is why, according to Cohn, one could as well claim that “postmod-
ern” questions of meaning “represses” musical mathematics;; one could talk about phobia RI PDWKHPDWLFV DQG ULJRURXV ORJLF 6WLOO LQ P\ UHVHDUFK , GH¿QH ³PXVLF WKHRU\´ PRUH broadly, as comprehending theories of music in all its signifying dimensions, including both the abstract mathematical and the semantic dimensions (both of which have been issues of theorization since the Antiquity).
33 As Hatten (1994: 247) and Monelle (1992: 19) point out, the core of the problem in discussions of musical meaning often lies, on the one hand, in the confusion between linguistic and musical meaning and, on the other hand, in the confusion that “meaning” is understood in the naïve sense of the most obvious referential meaning.
34 The fundamental philosophical, psychological, phenomenological, and semiotical issue here concerns the roles that knowledge or cognition plays in the act of musical per-
ception. Different stands have been taken on this issue. In the semiotical perspective that IRFXVHVRQVSHFL¿FZRUNVRIDUWWKHUROHRIFRQYHQWLRQVEHFRPHVFUXFLDODQGLQVXSHUDEOH Naturally it is activities of the art world (criticism, research, art talk, and so forth) that form, maintain, and construct a given system of art and that guarantees a semantics, even if it is ideological and unconscious.
non-representativeness.35 Thus the concept of absolute music can be approached as a musical topic,36 as Raymond Knapp (2003: xiv, 98), for instance, has done in his study of Mahler. The author relates the topic of absolute music in Mahler’s music to alienation and lost subjectivity: absolutist machinery constructs non-
subjectivity (ibid.: 98, 115–117), which in the light of this study count among the rhetoric of unsettled subjectivity.37 In a way, the topic of absolute music in late Romantic and modern music comes quite close to the Classic topic of the
³OHDUQHGVW\OH´6LPLODUO\LQYLVXDODUWVVLJQVRI³QRQ¿JXUDWLYHQHVV´³DEVWUDFW high art”, and “Form” (e.g., tables of rows and columns, and geometrical color
¿HOGVDUHFUXFLDOVXEMHFWPDWHULDOVDQGWKHPHV±WRSLFV±IRUPLQJWKHLFRQRJUD-
phy of modernism (Kuusamo 1996: 118–146).
Accordingly, from the sign-theoretical point of view, we have no reason to consider music as more abstract, more without content, and less representative than some other art forms. For all sign systems are naturally abstract (e.g., that language is an abstraction is a fundamental tenet of Saussurean semiotics), and no sign system can exist without representation. Needless to say, musical rep-
resentation differs from literary or visual representation because it is musical, i.e., because the medium is different. But even if we experience music as more abstract, we cannot conclude that music is less representative. On the contrary, it thus seems to represent “non-representativeness” most successfully. Moreover, it may be that the contents of music are mostly grasped unconsciously or precon-
sciously. In fact, if we do experience music as “abstract” and “loose” in content, it could be inferred that the density of its contents (cf. the degree of condensation in the Freudian sense) must be especially high, for high levels of abstraction produce “thicker” content.
In psychoanalytic art research, music has been traditionally considered in WHUPVRILWVQRQYHUEDODQGWHPSRUDOQDWXUHDQGDVVXFKGLI¿FXOWWRDSSURDFK WKHVHDPRQJRWKHU³GLI¿FXOW´FKDUDFWHULVWLFVPDNHPXVLFIHHOVRDEVWUDFW$QG yet, it could be thought, for this very reason, that music may be especially effec-
tive in propelling us into the realm of the unconscious, affects, body, and sexual-
ity. Not only do postmodern musicologists think this way, many researchers and theoreticians of music therapy think the same. Thus, as a short cut to the uncon-
scious, music would be a convenient object of psychoanalytic study. On the other hand, precisely because of its effectiveness in regard to unconscious workings 35 My semiotical critique of the aesthetics of musical modernism is largely in debt to Altti Kuusamo’s (1996: 118–146, cf. also, 34–47) semiotical critique of the aesthetics and iconography of modernism in visual arts.
36 See Chap. 4.2.3
37 Robert Fink (1998: 256, 259), for his part, wittingly considers “absolute music” as a display of hysteria, comparable to the “sign language” of hysterical women’s bodies.
related to affects, body, and sexuality, music has been most sheltered from discus-
sions addressing such aspects on behalf of rigid, modernist formalizations, and rejection of semantics and affective dimensions in music. Indeed, the most rigid formalism could be theorized as an “anxiety-ridden defense mechanism” (Fink 1998: 252). As brought out above (p. 40), this unconscious resistance against the emotiveness of music has long been recognized (Racker 1951).
The rejection (or repression) of semantics and content from modern musico-
logy may of course have other reasons besides those of the disciplinary-histori-
cal, cultural-historical, and aesthetical-ideological ones. For example, it has been suggested that music, as an art form connected to the auditory organs, does not stand mainly for the representation of outer reality (Tarasti 1998: 1626).38 That is, instead of performing sign functions involving external phenomena, music is a more “self-related” (ich-bezogen) art form than literature or the visual arts are (ibid.). If this is the case, then does music represent inner reality (cf. the H[SUHVVLRQ WKHRULHV RI 5RPDQWLFLVP DQG PRGHUQLVP" ,QGHHG LW LV QRW SRVVL-
ble in the perspective of semiotics to conceive of music as non-representation and non-sign. Yet, in the discourse of art and psychoanalysis – not to mention poststructural semiotics and constructivism – it is impossible to maintain a dis-
WLQFWLRQEHWZHHQUHSUHVHQWDWLRQRIRXWHUDQGLQQHUUHDOLW\VXEMHFWVLJQL¿FDWLRQ and discourse belong necessarily together, and our reality consists of discursive acts that signify our conceptions of “reality”. Still, the auditory sense, and its SHFXOLDUUROHLQVLJQL¿FDWLRQDQGVXEMHFWLYLW\KDVUHFHLYHGPXFKOHVVVHPLRWL-
cal study than has the visual sense. Yet, psychoanalysis can contribute much to WKHVWXG\RIKRZWKHDXGLWRU\VHQVHIXQFWLRQVLQVLJQL¿FDWLRQVXEMHFWLYLW\DQG cultural practices;; for psychoanalysis has special knowledge and particularized theories concerning the pre-linguistic experiential world of the infant – a world dominated strongly by the auditory sense. The auditory sense, and its special VLJQL¿FDQFHIRUSUHOLQJXLVWLFFKLOGKRRGKDVEHHQGLVFXVVHGSV\FKRDQDO\WLFDOO\
and with interesting results (e.g., Isakower 1939;; Kohut & Levarie 1990 [1950];;
Niederland 1958;; Anzieu 1979 and 1995;; Rosolato 1978), and these ideas have been applied to explain musical experience. In the light of these ideas, we could DOVRLQTXLUHKRZWKHVSHFLDOVLJQL¿FDQFHRIWKHDXGLWRU\VHQVHDQGWKHKXPDQ voice in early childhood later manifest in our views (ideologies) about music.
38 It is often forgotten that music, as an art, does not have a monopoly on the auditory organs. For example, literature is not only related to the visual but to the auditory organ, too (e.g., rhythm, onomatopoieia;; also, one often reads by the inner ear). Moreover, music LVVLJQL¿FDQWO\UHODWHGWRYLVXDODQGYHUEDORUJDQVDQGUHSUHVHQWDWLRQDVZHOOIRUDQLQWHU-
esting account of this, see Kramer 2002: Chaps. 7–8, esp. pp. 145–147). Likewise, Eero Tarasti (1998: 1626) continues his course of thought: “On the other hand, during its vari-
ous stylistic periods, music has always been more or less related to extra-musical reality, and has been semantic by its very nature of transmitting messages.”
As Kramer (2002: 2–3) writes, “as the art of the ear more than the eye, music collapses the sense of distance associated with visuality”. This, then, results in a sense of immediacy (presence).
In sum, and in the opinion of this writer, the dearth of psychoanalytic music research may be explained less by the “nature” of music, and more by the ideolo-
gies concerning that supposed nature – from conceptions of art and music, from DHVWKHWLFVSKLORVRSK\DQGPXVLFRORJ\ZKLFKGH¿QHGHWHUPLQHDQGGLVFLSOLQH the (nature of) music and musicology of any given time. If one accepts the femi-
nist view that an essential characteristic of mainstream musicology has been the disparagement, if not downright denial, of the emotional and sensual aspects of music, then it is not surprising that there has been little place given to psycho-
analytic music research. For example, the resistance against semantics in positi-
vist-formalist music analysis and theory has effectively excluded the possibility of most psychoanalytic music research. Conceptions of musical meanings and contents, and ways to analyze them, have in recent decades become more accept-
able, with hermeneutics being in the mainstream of music research and analysis.
It thus seems to be more acceptable than before to import psychoanalytic think-
ing into the traditional heartlands of music research.
Nevertheless, I offer a caution: discussions of modernist ideology and for-
malist music analysis, their hostility to meaning and hermeneutics, postmod-
ern trends in musicology, and so on;; such discourse can oversimplify things, and often ignore large parts of music research, such as a century of hermeneutic analyses prior to the paradigm of new-musicological hermeneutics. Oversimpli-
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cal, and institutional context, and when the claim of being “new” is taken as the whole truth or just at face value. It is true that formal analysis has dominated Anglo-American music analysis, but the same does not strictly apply to continen-
tal Europe, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, for instance. Furthermore, much music research, both before and after the new musicology, has been address-
ing the very same questions of musical meaning and socio-cultural semantics.
Altti Kuusamo (1996: 5) has observed that a new research trend (e.g., new musi-
cology, musical semiotics, musical biosemiotics) in the humanities usually has three stages of development. Firstly, the new trend emphasizes the differences in UHJDUGWRWKHIRUPHUUHVHDUFKDQGSUR¿OHVLWVHOIE\GLIIHULQJUDGLFDOO\IURPRWKHU research in general. From a psychoanalytic angle, this can be seen as a necessary and inevitable separation – problematics of puberty related to archaic ways of maintaining selfhood/subjectivity/identity. At the second stage, interest arises in the predecessors of a trend. At the third stage, the scholars of the new trend notice that there seems to be so much previous research that one has to admit that the QHZWUHQGZDVQRWDOOWKDWQHZ,QRWKHUZRUGV¿UVWWKHSURSRQHQWVFODLPWKDW
their paradigm is new and nothing like that existed before;; then, at the third stage, they realize that many relevant studies existed before their paradigm came into EHLQJ%\WKLVSURFHVVWKHQHZWUHQG¿QGVIUXLWIXOGLDORJLFDOFRQWDFWDQGDNLQG of interactive, “peaceful” relation with former and other research. The “new”
WUHQGMRLQVWKHWUDGLWLRQLQVWHDGRIHPSKDVL]LQJWKHEUHDN,ELG:LWKUHJDUGWR new musicology, the third stage has been attained, which is why the name of the trend is not very important anymore, and it may even sound “old” or passé. This general developmental curve can be seen in musical semiotics also.
Furthermore, the relationship between new musicology and psychoanalytic research is not quite as simple as it may seem from the above discussion. This is the case because, above all, new musicology has been distinctly feminist-drawn.
The relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis is a complex and some-
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spective as guilty of patriarchal bias, ahistoricity, biological essentialism, and overall insensitivity to matters of gender. Robert Fink (1998: 250–251) argues, that the feminist new musicology has been ideologically hostile to psychoanaly-
sis because it is grounded in those postmodern feminist theories that are con-
sis because it is grounded in those postmodern feminist theories that are con-