Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 4, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Psychoanalytic perspectives on music: an intersection on the oral and aural road
1Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, USA. jjnagel@comcast.net
Abstract:
This paper is organized around two ideas. The first invites the reader to consider the importance of music in emotional life, suggesting that for some people, music can have profound, deep, and transformative effects, both in loosening defenses and in deepening the psychoanalytic experience. The second idea is that analysis of the formal properties of music have both specific and overdetermined meanings that share elements with psychoanalytic principles. I suggest that, if the verbal analysis of dreams paves a royal road to the unconscious, the formal properties of music provide an aural road to the same destination. Two clinical vignettes and scenes from Verdi's opera Otello are used to illustrate these interrelated ideas.
Related Concept Videos
Psychosexual Stages of Personality: Oral
Weaning, typically occurring around the age...
Psychosexual Theory of Development
The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud's psychosexual...
Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud's concept of psychic determinism asserts that...
Freudian Psychology
Dreaming
Psychodynamic Perspectives on Personality
Psychodynamic theorists argue that unconscious...

