In Freud's Lost Chord, Daniel Sapen explores what it means for the development of depth psychology that Freud was perplexed by music, and unlike nearly every other aspect of human life, had little to say about it - a problem shared by most others in the early generations of psychoanalytic thought. Psychoanalyst Charles Rycroft wrote "One cannot help regretting that none of the pioneers of the unconscious thought naturally in auditory terms"; more than this, over 100 years later, not only is music per se rarely looked it in psychodynamic terms, jazz music is almost completely absent from the literature. Dr Sapen looks in depth at the intricate details of psychodynamic theory and practice, as well as an overview of its development, to address the possibility that a theoretical model that has little to say about such a basic and omni-present aspect of human life must be seriously flawed in its effort to explain what it is to be human, and how the mind functions and what it creates. However, Sapen illustrates how numerous other thinkers (Jung, Winnicott, Bion, Loewald, Rycroft), some seemingly at odds with and others serving as essential developments and re-workings of psychoanalytic principles, have managed to illuminate and integrate those missing principles so basic to music and creativity - to development, dreaming, thinking, and relating among other human beings intimately and in a society. Nearly uniquely in the psychodynamic literature, Sapen looks in depth at the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane as examples of the living, breathing psychological processes so essential to understanding the meaning and dynamics of being human that Freud could not, for a variety of reasons, conceptualize.
Industry Reviews
'This is no mere parody - it is a confession, a treatise, and a very, very clever tragi-farce, which is as funny as it is serious, and serious as it is funny. There is a living, breathing countertransference exploration throughout this fictitious analysis of an all-too-recognizable late-twentieth century young adult, Hamlet Dane, and his alter-ego analyst Dr Horacio. Hamlet in Analysis explores, amongst other things, the cracks and gaps between analytic theory and practice through the candid, private thoughts of our analyst-narrator, whose constantly self-limited "philosophy" is pierced, rankled, ruptured, and herniated by his young patient, provoking an ongoing challenge to his own sanity. But it contains "the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited".'- Neil Maizels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Melbourne, Australia'"Bravo! Bravo!" I felt like saying after finishing this wonderful performance, an amazing tour de force in which we are led through a modern-day Hamlet's psychoanalysis (Kleinian via Meltzer with Bion part of the brew) with Horatio as the psychoanalyst. What is at stake is further birth and growth of psychoanalysis, creativity, and personality, marked by necessary failure, which, at times, fuels glimpses of more possibilities. Meg Harris Williams draws on rich cultural associations as she shines her light on aesthetic dimensions of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic dimensions in the heart of art. A book that not only crosses disciplines but also alchemically mixes them and brings us closer to our own experience.'- Michael Eigen, PhD, author, Contact with the Depths and The Birth of Experience
