Book Review: Anna Chesner and Sissy Lykou (eds), Trauma in the Creative and Embodied Therapies: When Words Are Not Enough

Abstract

movement in music. He locates that in the possibilities of tonal harmony, with its deployment of tension and release through dissonance and resolution as it moves towards the cadence. He regards those elements as reflective of human experience – ‘Music is then sound transformed by human experience’ (p. 19)–and the sonata principle, rooted in tonality, as a model of harmonic movement both generating and informing musical and emotional structure. The author has less time for atonal music, which he sometimes places under a general umbrella of ‘serialism’ (surely not always the case), partly because he experiences such music as more static. He speculates about the relationship between the emergence of atonality and growing awareness, articulated by Freud, of the chaotic and fragmentary nature of unconscious experience, far from the smooth progressions of shared tonal understanding; he cites Schoenberg’s Erwartung as an example of music that ‘. . . seems to take us nearer to extreme or “dissonant” mental states, almost borderline hysterical at times’ (p. 26). The possibility that atonal music may also find forward movement – through shifts in intensity, pace, texture, sound colour and so on – and by those means create an emotional narrative in its own terms, is not considered. Every musically inclined reader will find resonances in this book, but there are some inevitable gaps. As the author is primarily intrigued by the experience of the listener, and by extension by the intersubjective listener/composer relationship, the emotional impact and complexities of actively playing or singing are relatively little considered. For music therapists, especially those who think of their work as psychoanalytically informed, the absence of any discussion of improvisation will also stand out. The possibility of music therapy itself as a therapeutic modality is not raised. Music therapy is mentioned only once in a section which considers some theories of music and emotion in social contexts: the author mentions the work of DeNora, in particular her enquiry into women’s experience of music in ‘. . . exercise classes, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions, and in the retail sector.’. . (p. 96). It might seem a natural next step, given the author’s preoccupation with musical activity as emotional, relational, and with deep roots in unconscious experience, to explore the possibilities of music therapy itself, especially as there are recurring reminders of the ways in which the language of music may enhance understanding of the psychoanalytic encounter. But that is not for this book. Overall, however, this is a book of discursive exploration which offers, through its wealth of references and examples, the possibilities of plenty of fascinating side turnings off its main path to take the reader further. The absence of any detailed reference to music outside the Western classical tradition might be perceived as a limitation; it should also, however, act as starting point for each of us to consider some of the book’s central questions in our own musical terms. My own encounter with this book has reminded me to be seriously curious about my own musical history, relationship with music and ways of engaging with it, and how those may be played out in clinical practice. When we are in among music every day, clinically and in other ways, perhaps it can become so much part of things that there is less space for some more fundamental questions about why we need it, why we enjoy it, how we use it, and what its place is in our own inner worlds and unconscious experience. But as therapists, at least, to continue to look at those questions is central to the self-reflection that is called for if we are to seek to act with as much authenticity as we can find in our encounters with our patients. So this is an invitation to step back and to take time and space for continuing contemplation of the depth of our involvement with music, whatever forms it takes. As Kennedy himself says in his final sentence: ‘This book has been an attempt to look into the nature of the musical experience, but the mystery remains’ (p. 148).