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Why this paper? The comparison of psychoanalytic «listening» to musical listening has a long history, dating back at least to the first publications on the subject by Theodor Reik in the 1930s.1 Attempts to bring about some kind of generic integration of the element of «sound» and the «auditory sphere» — to which Isakower in 1939 assigned an «exceptional position» in psychic life — into the edifice of psychoanalytic theory go back even further, to the contributions of Ferenczi (1909) and Abraham (1913).
The psychoanalytic literature has since been punctuated with periodic re-emergences of the theme of «sound and music»,2 which has been reconsidered from every possible theoretical perspective — from the classical Sexualtheorie to ego psychology, to the various object-relations currents, and to interpersonalist theories (Sterba, 1946, 1965; Kohut, 1957; Racker, 1965; Noy, 1969; Nass, 1971; Wittemberg, 1980; Rechardt, 1987; Feder, 1990; Sand & Levin, 1992). Again, as Zanette (1997) pointed out, the work of Bion is dotted with musical metaphors. Significant contributions have resulted from the interest taken in the «musical» aspects of the analytic relationship and of human relations in general, as well as from psychoanalytic curiosity about music, marginal as it may have been. One need only recall the two essay collections Explorations in Music, edited by Feder, Karmel & Pollock (1990), or, in Italy, the contributions of Fornari, Schön & Schön, Mancia, Di Benedetto and Petrella.