What Else Did the Obsessive Hummer Hum About? A Contribution to Samuel Juni's Case*

I would like in this article to contribute to Samuel Juni's (1987) “From the Analysis of an Obsessive Hummer: Theoretical and Clinical Implications” in order to share a complementary viewpoint to his discussion which may elucidate further understanding of his patient's indirect communications through obsessive singing. There seem to be other significant meanings at different levels of abstraction in these songs, in addition to the interesting and thought-provoking interpretations Juni presented related to the patient's social and moral associations to the melodic directionality and tonality of the music.

In a postscript to the treatment readers are told that during the several months after analysis, Saul experienced the appearance of new tunes with undistorted lyrics of “obscure significance” as a substitute for those analyzed in treatment; the compulsion to hum and sing, however, disappeared several months later, but Saul then felt “a pervasive feeling of boredom and emptiness, which, he is certain, his obsession had managed to obscure” (p. 77). He also had acquired the skill to understand and differentiate song lyrics as he heard them, which he could not do previously; however, he continued to consider music “as non-sensical, and maintains a unidimensional orientation of ‘high versus low’ in his perception in the entire domain” (p. 77). Additionally, Juni considers it important to comment on Saul's recent “insightful analytic interpretation,” which, however, because it was not elucidated in analysis, may therefore be considered of “secondary nature” (p. 78). Apparently, Saul had observed that the shower was “consistently