Webinar: Psychoanalysis: Sounds, Music, and Silence
Panellists: Francis Grier, Daniel Röhe, Rafael Ornstein
Moderator: Laura Katz
This webinar will be in English.
In recent years, several psychoanalysts have reflected on the links our field can establish with music as an object of research. From its place as artistic expression, in close relationship with the biography of its creators. Due to the presence of music in the psychoanalytic session and examining the role of the melodic as a channel of communication in the process of psychic constitution, new perspectives of reflection are opened. For this reason, this webinar will seek to broaden this background, revealing a space for theoretical-clinical exchange on how psychoanalysts consider music and its irradiations in our practice.
Speakers:
Francis Grier (UK)
He is Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a Training Analyst and Supervisor of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is also a couple psychotherapist. He works in private practice in London. He leads a seminar for the psychotherapists in the Fitzjohn’s Unit of the Tavistock Clinic, which specialises in working psychoanalytically with patients who would not usually have access to psychoanalytic treatment. He has written and edited papers, chapters and two books on couple psychotherapy, including Oedipus and the Couple (2005, Karnac), and papers for the IJP on two Verdi operas (Rigoletto and La Traviata), on a gendered approach to Beethoven, on musicality in the consulting room, and the music of the drives and perversions. Before training psychoanalytically, he was a professional musician. He gave the first-ever solo recital at a Royal Albert Hall Proms concert in 1985 and, in 2012, was awarded a British Composer Award.
Title: “The music of psychoanalytic sessions”
I will explore the subject of music in psychoanalytic sessions, the actual music made by the psychoanalytic couple. Many authors have written about the metaphorical musicality of aspects of psychoanalysis. Still, few have tackled the fact that the sound of the human voice is always musical so that, behind and alongside the words, the participants are making music. Whilst they may think they are communicating in terms of verbal signifiers, they interact on a primal musical level, which is often more expressive of the emotional relationship than the formal verbal exchange. It's this area between patient and analyst that I will be exploring.
Daniel Röhe (Brazil)
He is a psychotherapist in private practice in Brazil. He graduated and obtained a master's and a doctorate focusing on psychoanalysis. He has participated in musicological conferences in Finland, the UK and Greece. His paper Oedipus Goes to the Opera was presented at the conference Psychoanalysis on Ice II, held in Reykjavík, Iceland – such writing and its sequel being published by the International Forum of Psychoanalysis. His research focuses on operas as sources of clinical knowledge and music education in clinical training. Daniel has published several articles on music and psychoanalysis, both in English and Portuguese.
Title: “An Aria for Antigone: A Musicological and Psychoanalytical Study”
Sophocles’ Antigone was embraced by German Romantics, aiding the creation of a Greek ideal in post-French Revolution Germany. Freud assumed such ideal using identification with the Haskalah doctrine. The erudite musical repertoire is discussed in parallel to modern Greek compositions.
Download PDF: An Aria for Antigone A Psychoanalytical and Musicological Study
Rafael Ornstein (USA)
He is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in Brookline, MA. He is a graduate of and on the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute faculty. He is an Instructor in Psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical school, and he supervises psychiatry residents at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Medical School continuing education course on psychodynamic psychotherapy. He enjoys playing the piano in the sextet, Blue Dog Jazz, a band with monthly gigs in local restaurants and clubs. Look to stream their CD on Spotify.
Link to podcast
Title: “The Analytic Dialogue: Music of the Duet”
It is a well-known adage for analysts to “listen to the music beyond the words”. As a psychoanalyst and jazz musician, I find that conceptualising the analytic conversation as an improvised jazz duet is evocative and brings forth important considerations for the analytical process. Together analyst and patient create the melodic and harmonic theme of the patient’s life as it plays out in the unfolding process. It is within the structure of the analytic frame and this initially co-created musical theme that improvisation, with its capacity to deepen emotional exploration and expression, can take place.
Moderator:
Laura Katz (Argentina)
She is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a Titular Member of Didactic Function of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA), a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and the Latin American Psychoanalytic Federation (FEPAL). She has held various institutional positions and published multiple works on psychoanalysis.