-
Music in the Head: Living at the Brain-Mind Border
- American Imago
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 66, Number 1, Spring 2009
- pp. 71-90
- 10.1353/aim.0.0041
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Upon awakening from a second bypass operation in 1995, the author became aware of involuntary tunes and songs running through his head. Thinking at first that these came from external sources, he soon realized that they were coming from within. These intruding musical sounds have continued to the present. After exploring many suggestions for somatic treatments, this neurologist-psychoanalyst began a permanent ongoing study of these phenomena through a neurootologic psychoanalytic prism. The data and conclusions of this scientific self-attention form the contents of this paper. The songs and music came to be understood as having unconscious meanings that fit within the same theoretical frame as dreams and symptoms. They can be related to a wide continuum of behavior, including people who tap, sway, hum and whistle without being fully conscious of doing so. The manner in which the brain receives inchoate sounds that it converts into a series of secondary-process musical manifestations, from rhythms to tunes to songs, and yes, even to symphonies, sheds light on the creative process. The brain-mind functioning involved can be applied generally, from songs to poems, stories, and all creative acts.