by tagfat » Sat Jul 10, 2004 8:52 am
I think that one reason why suggestions like this is a bit laughable is that they often dont consider that people will listen to the music in question as a chosen means of emotional regulation. When parrents complain about the music that their teenage kids listen to, they often invalidate the emotions driving the behavior.
Apart from that i think that music should be considered a first choice psychological tool.
I always like the theosophical take on music which traces historic cultural/psychological devellepments to musical origins. The english composer Cyril Scott was also a theosophist and wrote a book on the esoteric influence of music, supposedly in cooperation with one of the masters of wisdom, Koot Hoomi. Chapter titels like "Beethoven, sympathy and psychoanalysis". "the Mendelssonian symphaty", "Robert Schumann and the child nature", "Chopin, the pre-raphaelites and the emancipation of women" will give you an idea of the project.
I tend to think of my own favorite composer, Shostakovich, in terms of emotional dysregulation and the suffering og people with personality disorders. Not that i think that poor Shostakovich had one, but he was living under the constant scrutiny of Stalin and suffered imensly for it.
In times of depression i have sometimes lost all affinity with normal cheerfull music but found a deep source of validation in his twisted music.