Music as a Powerful Reducer of Anxiety

The pandemic ignited and exacerbated profound—indeed primal—anxieties that remain palpable as we cautiously find ourselves turning a corner toward herd “immunity.” Trained classically as a musician and subsequently as a psychologist and psychoanalyst, I am particularly curious about the intrapsychic value of music and what resonates in our minds when words have limited value. During the past year, I have heard patients and colleagues speak spontaneously about music’s impact on their moods. Dr. T. found it soothing to listen to a particular composition when he mourned

Page 66

the recent death of his mother. One colleague and I exchanged e-mails that contained links to music on YouTube. I have attended professional meetings on Zoom where music was played to conclude the sessions. My patient, Ms. B., was humming as she entered her session, but she was unaware of producing her own music until I inquired. She told me that she had attended a concert pre-COVID and wished I could have shared in it. I noted that she was sharing it with me and wondered if she had more to say. Indeed she did.

I have listened to patients burst into songs about celebrations, life cycle events, and losses as music evoked memories. Many years ago I worked with a group of children who could not speak but could comprehend what was said to them. Each student had individualized computers to express themselves, and I used music to communicate with them. One child told me, through his special device, about his parents’ divorce, and he cried. An adolescent girl shared her excitement about wearing eye shadow.

I often remember how the Masque Movement in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety (1949) comforted me following the untimely death of my mother when I was a student at Juilliard. The music spoke to me more than words. It is ironic how during COVID-19 a masque/mask shut out a life-threatening virus while our emotional lives are metaphorically masked from the joys of in-person relationships, activities, friendships, and hugs.

I propose that music is an integral part of the emotional healing of our psychohistorical pain and current trauma. The formal qualities of Western music (pitch, rhythm, dynamics, tempo) enable us to feel both elevating and disquieting dynamics simultaneously. I listen to the tone of voice and nuance in my patients’ associations, the rhythms of their speech, and the timing and length of their silences.

Developmental psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in Childhood and Society (1951) maintains that the earliest gurgles, coos, and other sounds exchanged between a mother and an infant before the development of language are the precursors of emotional security until the reality principle bursts the symbiotic bubble of omnipotence. Psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu suggests these aural experiences create a responsive “sound envelope” (“The Sound Image of the Self,” International Review of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 6, 1979, 23-

Page 67

26).

The late psychoanalyst, Stuart Feder, maintained that “music is a simulacrum of mental life” (Music as a Simulacrum of Mental Life, available at international psychoanalysis.net, unpublished, presented at 2004 meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association), and philosopher Suzanne Langer noted, “music sounds like emotions feel” (Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 1942). While acknowledging Freud’s disdain for music, “…with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure…” (The Moses of Michelangelo, SE, Vol. XIII, 1914, 211), I suggested in my book Melodies of the Mind (2013) that in addition to Freud’s claim that dreams are the royal (oral) road to the unconscious, music also travels a parallel path on a royal (aural) road to the same destination. As such, music can evoke powerful effects.

Abandonments in childhood, loss of a loved one, illness, moving, economic inequities, divorces, and breakups of families are devastating to people of all ages. Coping strategies that worked in childhood are unlikely to be effective for adults. Intellect, reason, and productive activities are not able to quell the devastation of strong unconscious feelings (i.e., the ghosts from our past personal histories), which are always lurking as skeletons in the closet of the mind. Stress awakens them to haunt us. Emotions out of sight are not out of mind. Words often feel inadequate because they are. You can close your eyes and cover your face consciously, but you cannot purposefully turn off your hearing and mask the melodies in your mind. But music can help heal your wounds.

The healing and evocative power of music has roots in music history. Music has been used for years to energize and suppress political movements and compositional styles. Music is played at weddings and funerals and is subliminally piped into grocery stores and shopping malls to enhance purchasing, as well as at the dentist’s office to induce relaxation. The use of earbuds comes as close to having recorded music in your head as you can without music being artificially implanted. Even Mother Nature serenades us with bird calls, wind gusts, horn beeps, children playing, babies’ cries, and siren screams. Each of us would hear a personal rendering of a composition by John Cage titled 4’33” (said “four minutes and 33 seconds,” composed in 1952) where no sound is produced by the performer and audiences are left with their own reactions about sounds that penetrate the silence. Alex Ross, a music critic for The

Page 68

New Yorker, has alluded to this idea in his 2007 book, The Rest is Noise.

Music has a historical precedent for changing social policy, influencing cultural trends, and affecting education reform. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart belonged to the Illuminati freemasons and used musical motives in his compositions to connote symbolically the masonic ideals of courage and resilience. For example, a candidate seeking entrance into the freemasons would knock three times to gain entrance to the initiation ceremony. This musical metaphor is expressed in the three repeated chords in the overture in his opera The Magic Flute (completed in 1791).

In 1986 Leonard Bernstein delivered a speech at his Harvard alma mater during a time of terrorism. Pan Am Flight 73 had been hijacked and bombings erupted in Paris. Threats had recently accompanied Bernstein’s tour with the Israel Philharmonic in Vienna after Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi intelligence officer, was elected President of Austria. Bernstein maintained “…the stronger the defense, the greater the threat must be… I suddenly realized that this is the way the world lives…. existing in terms of an enemy” (Something Called Terrorism speech given at Harvard University in Fall 1986, never before released but reprinted in The American Scholar with an introduction by Carol J. Oja and Mark Eden Horowitz, September 1, 2008). In 1957, Bernstein’s West Side Story had made its debut, illustrating racial and psychological tensions between the Caucasian Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The “enemy” speaks to social issues then as well as now about our unconscious racism and prejudice.

Psychologically, the pandemic has ignited a mental health crisis. An emotional post-COVID-19 “syndrome”—a psychological version of the physical long-hauler syndrome—will persist long after the biological puzzle of this virus is resolved. I suggest using music in expanding a treatment repertoire beyond traditional methods to address emotional suffering and to enhance physical health—both in treatment and in social and educational programs. We can use music from all genres as an important instrument for emotional healing in restoring the soul of our wounded psyches.

The pandemic has compelled us to pause at a crossroad to look backward to learn from history, outward to imagine society hopefully learning from history, inward to reflect upon our own life experiences, and forward to establish safe, healthy comfort zones.

Page 69

Musicians can become ambassadors of our historical moment, as suggested in President Emeritus of Juilliard Joseph Polisi’s book, The Artist as Citizen (2005). A meaningful opportunity awaits musicians, mental health professionals, historians, and numerous others when the royal oral and aural roads intersect. Music can offer a sonic antibody for our traumatized country and our battered psyches to heal through heard immunity.

Page 70