"This second series of essays is an enriching companion to its ground-breaking predecessor. In a truly interdisciplinary endeavor, the scope of the "explorations" is extended by a unique international group of scholars working in both music and psychoanalysis. Unlike the earlier series, this volume consists entirely of original contributions." "This volume continues the analytic study of individual composers in articles on Bach and Mozart, Robert Schumann, Satie and Wagner. Wagner receives particular attention in studies of universal fantasies which relate to the music, the psychological function of the Leitmotif, and Freud's familiarity with Wagner, hitherto unexplored. Other composers whose works are considered are Schubert and Bartok." "A core issue in each of the two fields resides in the study of affect: What is its nature; the means and modes of representation? How is affect communicated in both the clinical situation and in the performance of music? In a central section of the book, "On Affect and Music," writers in both areas address these questions." "An opening section concerns itself with the problem of method in applied psychoanalysis with specific reference to music, the only such treatment in the literature. Also included in this portion of the book is a preliminary report of an ongoing study of contemporary composers based upon analytic interviews." "The volume concludes with a pair of historical essays, one of which considers myths of Freud's relationship to music. The second is a study of the musicologist in Freud's early circle (and the father of "Little Hans"), Max Graf." "The present volume then is the second in what promises to become a unique series - an intellectual venue for an authentically interdisciplinary study of psychoanalysis and music."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Emotion is an integral aspect of musical experience; music has the power to take us on an emotional and intellectual journey, transforming the listener along the way. The aim of this book is to examine the nature of this journey, using a variety of perspectives. No one discipline can do justice to music's complexity if one is to have a sense of the whole musical experience, even if one has to break up the whole experience into various elements for the purposes of clarification. The issues raised have some relationship to psychoanalytic understanding and listening, as after all psychoanalysis is a listening discipline; its bedrock is listening to the patient's communications. While of course there are significant differences between understanding of, and listening to, a musical performance and a patient in a consulting room, the book explores common ground. Evidence from neuroscience indicates that music acts on a number of different brain sites, and that the brain is likely to be hard-wired for musical perception and appreciation, and this offers some kind of neurological substrate for musical experiences, or a parallel mode of explanation for music's multiple effects on individuals and groups. After various excursions into early mother/baby experiences, evolutionary speculations, and neuroscientific findings, the book's main emphasis is that it is the intensity of the artistic vision which is responsible for music's power. That intense vision invites the viewer or the listener into the orbit of the work, engaging us to respond to the particular vision in an essentially intersubjective relationship between the work and the observer or listener. This is the area of what we might call the human soul. Music can be described as having soul when it hits the emotional core of the listener. And, of course, there is 'soul music', whose basic rhythms reach deep into the body to create a powerful feeling of aliveness. One can truly say that music of all the arts is most able to give shape to the elusive human subject or soul.

Book & CD. The way that the diverse-seeming fields of music and psychoanalysis inter-penetrate is a growing area of interest and exploration. This book comprises a selection of essays and interviews that explore various aspects of this interface. The papers cover various perspectives within the analytic spectrum. There are contributions by classical Jungian analysts, Jungian and other analysts concerned with the theories of Bion, Winnicott and Lacan, and also two music therapists. What is shared by these disparate authors is a loving involvement with music. This vital compilation suggests many areas for further exploration. To make the experience more vivid, an accompanying CD provide some examples of the music described in the text. The primary aim of the book has been to show how music, and an understanding of the psyche, can enrich each other.

Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism, is a revised and expanded second edition of a work first published in 1984, which was the first systematic presentation of the intersubjective viewpoint – what George Atwood and Robert Stolorow called psychoanalytic phenomenology – in psychoanalysis. This edition contains new chapters tracing the further development of their thinking over the ensuing decades and explores the personal origins of their most essential ideas. In this new edition, Atwood and Stolorow cover the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis and present a broad approach that they have designated phenomenological contextualism. This approach addresses personal subjective worlds in all their richness and idiosyncrasy and focuses on their relational contexts of origin and therapeutic transformation. Structures of Subjectivity covers the principles guiding the practice of psychoanalytic therapy from the authors' viewpoints and includes numerous detailed clinical case studies. The book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, practitioners of psychotherapy, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers. It will also be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and its philosophical premises.

"Since [Tarasti's] is unquestionably the most fully developed narrative theory in the literature, this book is an important landmark . . . " —Music & Letters Eero Tarasti advances a semiotic theory of music based on information provided by the history of Western music and by various sign theories. A Theory of Musical Semiotics provides a model for the semiotic analysis of both musical structure and semantics. It introduces English-language readers to musical narratology, which has been largely the province of European researchers.

Winner of the 2013 Sigourney Award! Belief and Imagination brings together Ronald Britton's writing on these subjects over the last 15 years, exploring the concepts from a Kleinian perspective. The book covers: The status of phantasies in an individuals mind - are they facts or possibilities? How the notions of objectivity and subjectivity are interrelated and have their origins in the Oedipal triangle How phantasies which are held to be products of the imagination, can be accounted for in psychoanalytic terms. Britton also examines the relationship between psychic reality and fictional writing, and the ways in which belief, imagination and reality are explored in the works of Wordsworth, Rilke, Milton and Blake.

Sixteen essays by respected psychologists, theologians, and philosophers look at the practice of psychology from a Christian perspective and explore the implications of the Christian view of human nature.