143

Is Music a Subject? Music in the symmetric and asymmetric psychic systems

Papers

Author:

Abstract:

The presentation discusses music as a subject, which can affect patients' and therapists' life situation by changing them in many ways. It is well known to us that music works as an object (as a good and bad transitional object (Winnicott), a self-object (Kohut) or an autistic object (Tustin). This presentation deals with the Freudian meta-psychology of the symmetric systems of the unconscious, which does not even include such categories as object and subject. Subject-object relationships are the products of the asymmetric system of the conscious. It is quite evident that music belongs first and foremost to the unconscious system. This means that music works at the same time as an object and a subject. One one hand a patient can locate his or her deepest feelings in a musical object and on the other hand a musical subject promotes psychic work by actively affecting our episodic and semantic memory as well as other non-verbal deep structures of the human mind. In the clinical therapy situation, music forms a vehicle of change, which works in the triangle of interaction formed by three equal actors; the therapist, patient and music. The presentation discusses a Freudian topographic theory of the human mind and especially its symmetric and asymmetric subsystems and the theory of binding destructive feelings with music. This presentation is also paying attention to the meta-psychology of music as well as differences and interaction between cognitive and psychodynamic approaches to clinical music therapy work. Also illustrative clinical material will be presented.

Keywords:

Topographic theory, symmetric and asymmetric subsystems, psychic bindind, psychodynamic music therapy