Music & Psyche

Spring Journal Books (the book publishing imprint of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, the oldest Jungian psychology journal in the world) http://www.springjournalandbooks.com/

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 To order this book, click here 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.

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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 Contributors

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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.