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As I lay on my analyst's couch, associating freely, as we did in those days, amid the memories and narratives, among the words that went through my mind, bits of melodies burst forth. In speaking of my relationship with my parents, I heard, in my mind's ear, a theme from Bizet's Symphony in C. It reminded me of a concert I had attended with my father at which we both heard this piece for the first time. The music conveyed my bond with my father. In another hour, when recalling aspects of my relationship with my mother, I “heard” the waltz from The Merry Widow. Depicting my mother as a widow, which she was not, and a merry one at that, had an obvious meaning to my Freudian analyst and me. It was my oedipal wish. However, equating the musical passages only with their verbal connotations, as was done in those days, did little more than substitute words for music. In retrospect, it raises a question for me: where is psychoanalysis situated with respect to music?
In those days, in the 1950s, before he had become a self psychologist, Heinz Kohut wrote several essays on music. In tune with the psychoanalytic writings of his day, he approached the enjoyment of music as he did psychoanalytic treatment and early development, from Freud's structural and psychoeconomic viewpoints.
“The mother's voice,” wrote Kohut and Levarie (1950) “becomes associated with oral gratification for the infant; the mother's lullaby, with the drowsy satisfaction after feeding. Early kinesthetic eroticism (rocking the cradle [Coriat, 1945]), for example, anticipates the enjoyment of dancing and may become associated with definite rhythmic patterns” (p. 142).
The relationship between music and psychoanalysis that is contained in Kohut's writings was typical of the 1950s. It was a time when