Music & Psyche

Spring Journal and Spring Journal Books
Spring Journal Books
(the book publishing imprint of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, the oldest Jungian psychology journal in the world)
Music and Psyche
Music and Psyche
Contemporary Psychoanalytic Explorations
Paul W. Ashton & Stephen Bloch, Editors
ISBN: 978-1-935528-04-3
325 pp.
Price: $ $26.95
Available for shipment on October 27th
The diverse contributors to this volume—from Jungian and other analysts, to performing artists, to music therapists—all share a thoughtful and loving involvement with music, from Beethoven and Schumann, to twentieth century compositions, to blues and contemporary song (samples are provided on the accompanying CD).

Interviews with senior analysts Michael Eigen and Mario Jacoby complement the papers, providing a lively sense of analytic minds in engagement and reflection.
*****
Praise for Music & Psyche
A wonderfully creative exploration of the interface between music and psyche as mediated through analytic understanding. The book covers a wealth of topics, from individual transformation, to new findings from neuroscience, to the healing powers of music’s spiritual dimensions, marvelously enhanced by a CD and a complete discography of musical references. This book opens new vistas for Jungians and non-Jungians alike interested in the nature of music’s impact and resonance in the psyche, and with psyche’s self-expression through music.
HESTER MCFARLAND SOLOMON / AUTHOR OF THE SELF IN TRANSFORMATION, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
This beautiful and important book (and CD) restores sound to its essential place within the symbolic language psyche uses to express, communicate, and heal. The wide-ranging, wisely chosen contributions play off one another, reverberating to enrich the reader-listener’s understanding while inviting us to refocus on listening and being heard as essential dynamics in all relationships. We gain an auditory kaleidoscope of themes that resonate in the non-verbal, emotionally vital depths between infant and mother, client and analyst, composer and audience, individual and society. For psychotherapists in particular, the emphasis on the language of auditory data rebalances the usual focus on visual symbolism to enrich our understanding of attachment dynamics and mystical states in which emergent consciousness is directly linked into the unconscious. This is a volume I will cherish and share.
SYLVIA PERERA / ANALYST, AUTHOR OF DESCENT TO THE GODDESS & THE SCAPEGOAT COMPLEX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface Paul Ashton and Stephen Bloch
Introduction Paul Ashton
1. The Third in Mahler's Ninth Melinda Haas
2. The Voice of the Anima in Popular Singing John Beebe
3. The Innate Transformational Properties of Beethoven’s Passion Music Helen Anderson
4. An E-Mail Interview with Mario Jacoby Paul Ashton
5. The Matrix of Music and Analysis Patricia Skar
6. Creative Torment or Tormented Creativity: Robert Schumann and Nineteenth-Century German Romanticism Laurel Morris
7. "I wrote what I heard": Late Thoughts on The Rite of Spring Kevin O’Connell
8. Music, Mind, and Psyche Paul Ashton
9. In You More Than You: The Lacanian Real, Music, and Bearing Witness Lawrence A. Wetzler
10. An E-Mail Interview with Michael Eigen Stephen Bloch
11. The Music of Unthinkable Anxiety and Nameless Dread Lawrence A. Wetzler
12. "Night Is a Sound": The Music of the Black Sun Stephen Bloch
13. Can Music Save the World? Melinda Haas
14. Bonfire of the Vanities: Music, Playback Theatre, Xenophobia and Trauma in a South African Township Chris Wildman
15. Abandonment, Wish, and Hope in the Blues William Willeford
16. Mercy: The Unbearable in Eigen’s Writings and John Tavener’s Prayer of the Heart Stephen Bloch
17. Song and the Psyche: Whispers of the Mind Nóirín Ní Riain
*****
About the Editors:
Paul Ashton is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst in private practice in Cape Town, where he lives with his wife and youngest daughter. He is the author of a monograph From the Brink: Experiences of the Void from a Depth Psychology Perspective (Karnac, 2007), and editor of and contributor to Evocations of Absence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Void States (Spring Journal Books, 2007). He has published various reviews and articles and lectured about music, art, literature, and the Void. He is a member of the South African Association of Jungian Analysts and is the editor of Mantis, the journal of the Southern African Association of Jungian Analysts.
Stephen Bloch is a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst in private practice in Cape Town, South Africa. He has published the chapter "Music as Dreaming" in Evocations of Absence (Spring Journal Books, 2007) and seminars on other aspects of music and psychoanalysis as well as on ethics. He is a founding member of the Southern African Association of Jungian Analysts (SAAJA) and has served on SAAJA’s Executive Committee as well as on its Assessment and Review, Ethics, and Library Committees.

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