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Dr. Roger Kennedy is a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry and an adult psychoanalyst. He is a past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the author of 13 previous books. He was a consultant for the NHS and previously in charge of the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital for 30 years. He has written interdisciplinary studies and done family and court work. How music affects us profoundly and powerfully, often at a deep and emotional level as well as an intellectual level, remains mysterious—even after finishing this superb text.
The book is divided into six chapters—almost musical itself:
Overture: Chapter one
Early musical experience: Chapter two
Origins of music's power: Chapter three
First movement: Music and emotion: Chapter four
Second movement: Music and emotion: Chapter five
Finale: Music and psychoanalytic connections: Chapter six
Psychoanalytical and musical listening share somewhat similar states of mind, cognitive processes, and nonverbal communication. The author references books as far back as 1819 and up 2018.
The Overture anticipates the ways of understanding music from social, cultural, psychological, biological, and some of the latest neuroscientific perspectives. No single discipline can simply define the complexity and give one the sense of the whole musical experience. At one point Kennedy describes a dyad between the analyst and patient as a duet a la Francis Grier. Noted in the text is “dissonant” experience and lack of harmony in an idealized but dysfunctional relationship using Tchaikovsky's words in a letter, “I tried lovingly to express in music the torment and at the same time the bliss of love. … I believe that music alone can do this.” In his book on harmony, Kennedy describes the aim of music “to picture the many various emotion of the souls.”