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General interest in psychoanalytic community educational film programs in different cities in the United States has increased. Patients in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy attend and often later express in their therapy sessions the impact these experiences had on them (Levin, 1996). Yet while film music may be rarely mentioned in these discussions, undoubtedly music has an important supporting role in films. What about the impact of film music in treatment? In addition to the interest that these educational film programs have generated, due to the pleasure as well as escape from routine in life that going to the cinema provides, many patients and therapists today are frequent viewers of new and old films shown in town, which eventually also can be seen on television or videos.
It is well known that patients may mention songs and that music may also surface to consciousness in the analyst's mind before, during, or after sessions related to the case. Hardly surprising, in view of the frequency of exposure to movies, recalled music may be film songs that accompany and enhance their plots. Thus, it is important for the analyst to be able to identify and differentiate recalled film music from the more general category of single hit parade popular songs with their more limited self-contained messages (see Gammond, 1991; Wilder, 1972). To analyze film songs as if of the latter type is to miss a unique opportunity to access to consciousness additional unconscious material in the evoker's mind of dynamics related to the film's action where the music is embedded. There usually are unconscious reasons, despite conscious ones, why a person evokes a particular song or instrumental music and not another one from his or her treasure chest of music contained in short- and long-term memory (Díaz de Chumaceiro, 1987, 1988).
Film music in general can be classified into three categories. The first one comprises complete instrumental scores; the second one, instrumental