Musings of a Musicophiliac

Although Sigmund Freud never played a musical instrument and, by all accounts, did not particularly relish musical performances, the vast majority of mental health professionals whom I know both professionally and socially cherish musical experience deeply. In one clinical organization to which I belong, we boast an eminent classical composer who has written pieces for the British royal family, but who now practices full-time as a clinician. In another of my professional organizations, we count as one of our members a retired operatic baritone who also works full-time with patients. And in still another organization for which I have long served as a Tutor and Training Therapist, two of my colleagues participate in a jazz ensemble that has recorded a much-admired suite of music in memory of the late Dr. John Bowlby Many of my psychological colleagues have married musicians—my own partner, incidentally, has sung professionally for the whole of her career. Indeed, as a frequent concert-goer in London, I would be hard pressed to recall a recent visit to either the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera, the Barbican Centre, or the Wigmore Hall—temples of British classical music—at which I did not encounter one or more psychological professionals (whether psychotherapist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, or psychiatrist) in the interval.

Perhaps psychological workers have a natural affinity for music because both mental health professionals and musicians have an acutely developed auditory capacity, a heightened sensitivity to sound and its importance. Elsewhere I have written (2005) about the crucial role of the psychotherapist's voice as a curative ingredient in clinical practice, based, in part, on observations of admired mental health professionals who have