The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations, Paperback

Emotion is an integral aspect of musical experience. Evidence from neuroscience indicates that music acts on a number of different brain sites, and that the brain is likely to be hard-wired for musical perception and appreciation. This offers some kind of neurological substrate for musical experiences, or a parallel mode of explanation for music's multiple effects on individuals and groups. No one discipline can do justice to music's complexity if one is to have a sense of the whole musical experience. After various excursions into early mother/baby experiences, evolutionary speculations, and neuroscientific findings, Roger Kennedy asserts that it is the intensity of the artistic vision which is responsible for music's power. That intense vision invites the viewer or the listener into the orbit of the work, engaging us to respond. Music can be described as having soul when it hits the emotional core of the listener. And, of course, there is 'soul music', whose basic rhythms reach deep into the body to create a powerful feeling of aliveness. One can truly say that music, of all the arts, is most able to give shape to the elusive human soul.

About author(s):Dr Roger Kennedy is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and an adult psychoanalyst. He was an NHS consultant in charge of the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital for nearly 30 years before going totally into private practice ten years ago. He was chair of The Child and Family Practice in Bloomsbury and is still a director there. His work includes being a training analyst and seeing adults for analysis and therapy, as well as children, families, and parents at his clinic. He is a past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and is well-known as an expert witness in the family courts. He has had 13 previous books published on psychoanalysis, interdisciplinary studies, and child, family and court work, as well as many papers.