Music and affects: Psychoanalytic viewpoints

Journal/Book: Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review. 1989; 12: 126-144.

Abstract: Discusses the connection between music and affects by focusing on general properties in music. Music is discussed as a nondiscursive language that symbolizes the bodily expressions of affects and certain basic human categories. Sound is perceived with the sense of hearing and vibration. To the infant, in whom hearing is already active, primitive affects consist mostly of bodily changes and the infant's perception of them, with the ideational content in the background. Sound, later tone sequences, and music will therefore be suited for symbolizing these affective bodily expressions. The infant and the adult listener associate similarities between the affect-expression and the world of sound, which is accomplished according to archaic meaning schemata.

Note: psychoanalytic interpretation of music perception & affects

Keyword(s): Psychoanalytic interpretation; music ; emotional responses; auditory perception

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