Music beyond sounds and its magic in the clinical process

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Article MUSIC BEYOND SOUNDS AND ITS MAGIC IN THE CLINICAL PROCESS Ruth Lijtmaer1

This paper highlights the role of music in psychic change through a clinical case. A patient, who was initially distant and cold, started to talk about music. An enactment around the analyst’s comment about a famous conductor, started an exchange of music ‘‘notes’’ that changed the course of treatment. For the analyst, it brought old memories and musical reveries. For the patient, music allowed him to be in touch with undiscovered parts of himself and losses that had not been mourned. There was a mutual personal transformation and expanding awareness of self and other for both participants.

KEY WORDS: reverie; music; unconscious communication

death;

transformation;

countertransference;

https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-020-09271-x

OVERTURE: REVERIE [BEGINNING: REVERIE]

It was a winter afternoon. I was in my office looking out the window. The snow was falling consistently. I started to hear, in my head, Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony. In my reverie, I was connecting the music to the beautiful landscape. But I also thought of Gustav Mahler’s (1860–1911) worldview, shaped by poverty, domestic violence, and the deaths of 7 of his 14 siblings (Feder, 1978, 2004; Dimitrijevic, 2007). He witnessed his father beating his mother, a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. He could do nothing but flee to the streets. Later, Mahler was struggling with his health, the early death of his daughter, and his wife Alma’s infidelity. He also had a brief Ruth M. Lijtmaer, Ph. D. is a Senior Supervisor, Training Analyst, and Faculty member at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey. She has a private practice in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and is a Board member of the IFPE. A short version of this paper was presented at the Conference: The Arts of Time: Relational Psychoanalysis and Forms of Vitality in Clinical Process. IARPP, Rome, Italy, June 9 to June 12, 2016 Address correspondence to Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph. D., 88 West Ridgewood Ave, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, USA. Email: [email protected]

LIJTMAER

analysis with Freud before his own death eight months later. I thought of the themes of death and dread, longing and loss, fate and redemption, beauty and suffering, reverberating in myriad and haunting forms in this symphony. Paradoxically, this movement is Mahler’s ‘‘love letter’’ to Alma. All of this was on my mind when my reverie was interrupted, I heard the door of my waiting room. I came back to reality. Paul was here. I thought of my struggles with Paul: I experienced him as cold and distant. I could not reach him emotionally. I frequently felt empty and at times angry that I could not move him from his defensive stance. I wondered if there was something I was not saying that could reach him emotionally. This paper is my present reconstruction after my reverie of what happened between Paul and me, before and after our talking about music became part of the analysis. I had my reverie about eight months into treatment. And mus

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