PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MUSIC: RESONANCES
By
Rakesh Shukla
In tune with the Indian way of story- telling of connecting with the past and much of psychoanalytical writings, let us begin with Freud (1914) who writes: “Nevertheless, works of art exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting. This has occasioned me, when I have been contemplating such things, to spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e. to explain to myself to what their effect is due to. Wherever I cannot do this, as for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is that affects me”. (p. 211).
Music and Freud
Increasingly, I move to the appreciation and wisdom of the Buddhist middle path, both in my own analysis as well as in work as a therapist. Therapy as helping us to move from the swings of the psyche to the two ends of the spectrum – the grandiose self and the little-me-no-nothing self – to a somewhat middle ground.
The bringing of the unconscious centre stage in the psyche by Freud destabilized the notion of ‘Man’ as a logical rational creature in charge of his destiny and ranks next to Galileo who proclaimed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and Darwin who propounded the evolutionary theory of the origin of the species.
Diamond (2012) takes the self-confessed lack of appreciation of music of Freud to the extreme of hate in the rather vehemently titled ‘Why we love music and Freud hated music’. In a sense turning Freud on his head Diamond extrapolates that the ‘hate’ indicates primal fear of the unconscious on the part of Freud! Diamond (ibid) observes “A Freudian interpretation almost certainly would conclude that the music stimulated some repressed or repudiated unconscious complex, memory or emotional content, typically sexual in nature, which the person feels compelled to avoid becoming conscious of at all costs. (Freud later, in his 60s, would have included repressed aggressive impulses as well.) But let’s take that one step further: What if someone’s dislike and avoidance or even hatred of music is rooted in a fundamental fear of the unconscious itself? Of the irrational”? A primal dread of what Rollo May (1969) called the “daimonic”? Or of what Jungians refer to as the “anima” or “feminine”?”
On the other hand Lehtonen and Shaughnessy (2015) take Freud’s inability to derive pleasure from music as establishing opposition to Nazism and almost make Freud sound like an anti-fascist psychoanalytic activist, reminiscent of Wilhelm Reich (1933) and ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’. Lehtonen and Shaughnessy (ibid) observe “To Freud, Nazism was more like a religious cult than a political movement, which shamelessly used music as a matter of mass-suggestion especially in its party-rallies. This kind of atmosphere is suggesting participants to forget their moral and common sense and blindly run into religious ecstasy. Freud thought that music was a form of mythical communication, which very effectively activated the dark powers of the unconscious. On the other hand, music was too close to Freud’s own child – psychoanalysis – which Freud wanted to connect exclusively to verbal communication and consciousness.” (p. 11-12).
In fact, Wagner’s music much admired by Hitler was considered by many as expressing the incipient phantasises and desires which contributed to the underpinning and ideology of Nazism. Freud was hardly reticent and wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Living through the rise of Nazism in society, the lack of any treatise or paper by him on the interconnections between the aspects of the individual psyche which fascism mobilizes cannot be ignored, in the context of the Lehtonen- Shaughnessy view of Freud as an activist against fascism.
Binaries and harmonies
In the constellation of our trio of friends in law faculty, ‘A’ constantly posited the conflict of the head and the heart in each and every situation in life. Carrying the logic to an extreme A neatly categorized me ‘B’ as all heart, which while gladdening, I simultaneously found bit offensive to my intellect. I could launch off on existentialism Sartre, Camus and Brata’s ‘My God died Young’ as well as the rest in our intellectual gang. The third of the trio ‘C’ was slotted as all brain by A; I am sure offending C at being caricatured as a creature with no heart. Many, youthful hours were spent in endless debates about this perennial conflict, without taking on board the simple truth that the body needs both the heart and the brain.
Kakar(2008), at times referred to by some as the Indian Freud posits the binary of the ‘rational’ and the ‘romantic’ and observes “In contrast, the rationalist vision is sceptical of all higher powers and exalted aims of life and likes to show that all god have clay feet.”(p.1). Striving to harmonize Kakar writes “A complex mind will be guided by both the visions, the romantic enlivening and lending a ‘poetic’ sensibility and sentiment to reason while the rational vision guards against the sentimental excesses to which the romantic is all too susceptible.”(p. 3).
In the context of Freud being moved by music but not understanding why leading to blocking his ability to appreciate music, Salmon (2008) gives us a beautiful glimpse of the harmonies of the head and the heart, the romantic and the rational possible: “This paper represents an attempt to separate, differentiate and meaningfully integrate two aspects of my personal and professional identities; musician and therapist. For 25 years I have merged these into the work of a music therapist, for the most part with dying hospitalized patients and their loved ones. My music therapy work has mined the rich affective, expressive, and soothing potential of music to elicit meaning and improve the quality of life of individuals facing death and dying. It is good work, yet at times music therapy has also felt like a compromise formation; not fully musician, not fully psychotherapist. While training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy increasingly informs my music therapy work, I suspect the opposite is also true; a life-long involvement with music and a long career in palliative care as a music therapist must similarly inform my psychotherapy work”.
Resonances
Frame
I find the learning and practice of Indian classical music good for my mental health. However, I have not been able to merge my interests like Salmon in say music therapy and I work as a psychoanalytic therapist. Engaging with the fields of psychoanalysis and Hindustani classical music led me to wonder at resonances.
In the psychoanalytic setting there is ‘free association’ but within a frame which is fixed and inflexible – the couch setting, the specified time and day of the session, the restrictions on personal relations outside the setting between therapist and client.
In the Hindustani classical music setting the seven notes of the sargam go as: ‘sa re ga ma pa dha ni sa’. Except the notes ‘sa’ and ‘pa’, the rest of the notes have a companion half note like‘re’ and ‘komal (flat) re’ or ‘ga’ and ‘komal ga’ or ‘ma’ and ‘teevra (sharp) ma’. There is room for experimentation and innovation but the lower ‘sa’, the ‘pa’ and the upper ‘sa’ constitutes the fixed inflexible frame.
Affect
The centrality of ‘affect’ in psychoanalysis is shared in Hindustani music. The singer is to feel the note being sung. Technically singing the right notes in itself is of no great merit and looked upon as mechanical and unable to evoke the mood of the ‘raag’ (melody) being sung. Hindustani classical music is a performance art but the singing is an inward journey by the artist, particularly in the dhrupad[1] style of music. Sanyal and Widdess (2004) observe ‘A related idea is that dhrupad is essentially a form of private contemplation, best performed for oneself alone or for an intimate circle of connoisseurs, and not for monetary gain in the public arena.’ (p. 38).
Diamond (ibid) indicates close kinship of the processes at play: “Music can stimulate emotions, evoke feelings or recollections, much as psychotherapy ideally does. It can trigger childhood memories, both positive and traumatic. Unlike rational conversation, music penetrates our intellectual defenses and speaks directly to the heart and soul of who we are.”
Silence and khali
Akin to silences in therapy sessions, we have the khali (trans. Empty) or the gap in Hindustani Classical Music. Speaking of silence Green (1974) observes “Thus silence can at first be seen as an empty space which, as the analytic process progresses, becomes a space to be filled, a space full of fantasy objects: the analysis is not engaged in its destruction but rather in its transformation in a way that is beneficial for the patient.” (p. 416).
The khali can be illustrated in the following kayda in teen taal in the tabla – a percussion instrument of the Indian sub-continent, where it is seen as the gap or space after dha __:
Dha dhirkit dha__dha tina, ta tirkit dha__ dhina
Dha dhirkit dha dhirkit dha dhirkit dha dha dha dhirkit
Dha __dha dhina
ta__tirkit ta tirkit dha dha dha dha tirkit
dha __dha dina
The ‘rest’ in Western Classical Music, an interval of silence in a piece of music marked by a symbol indicating the length of the pause, may be closest to the ‘khali’ of Hindustani Classical Music. Just as silence in therapy sessions can be eloquent and be a significant carrier conveying much, the ‘khali’ lends vitality to the music–the sudden pause like a vacuum creating a breathless expectancy for what follows greatly enriching and embellishing the music. The texture of the expectancy and emotions evoked is akin to the feelings while trekking in the Himalayas as to the magical worlds which may be round the next turn in the mountainous path.
Free association and alap
Akin to the ‘free’ association which has subterranean flow, currents, eddies and whirlpools is the alap in dhrupad. A dhrupad artist begins with alap which easily lasts for about forty-five minutes. There is no fixed sequence of the notes which has to be memorized and sung in a particular way with equal time gaps or pauses at each note. Unlike most of the learning where often the Guru/Teacher sings and the learner follows, alap has to be sung by the individual and is not merely following the sequence sung by the teacher. It is a ‘free’ exposition of the rag (melody) by the individual singer. Difficult enough at times as it is, still following and repeating what the teacher has sung looked much easier to me. I had grave apprehensions and was delighted the first time I managed to sing alap. As Sanyal and Widdess (ibid) put it: ‘Alap is normally considered to be an ‘improvised’ exposition and development of the chosen rag, in which the singer is not constrained by any precomposed fixed melody, rhythm or text.’ (p. 141).
Alap has the flavour of the paradoxical similar to the paradoxical processes at play in a psychoanalytic therapy session where giving vent to emotions helps in not ‘acting out’ in life. Widdess and Sanyal (ibid) observe ‘The domain of metre- measured rhythm –properly begins with the composition; in alap, rhythm is not normally measured according to units or cycles of equal length. It would be far from the truth, however, to say that there is no rhythmic structure in alap.’
There is no prefixed composition to be memorised which is to be sung. Neither is one to imitate and sing the alap which the guru/teacher may have sung. As Sanyal and Widdess (ibid) describe it ‘It differs from ‘composition’ only in that it takes place anew at each performance, and its techniques and structures are designed to meet that requirement.’
Never the twain shall meet?
Psychoanalysis makes no promise of the opening up of creative spaces of the self or striving for a higher spiritual self. As a therapist I subscribe to the modest aims enunciated by Freud (1893): “…much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health you will be better armed against that unhappiness”. (p. 305).
In sharp contrast the dhrupad performance is devotional, paradoxically the principal exponent of which are the Muslim family of Dagar brothers, who have maintained the rich tradition, singing to Hindu Gods. I first encountered dhrupad having strayed in my college days into a performance by the younger Dagar brothers Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar invoking-offering-celebrating, the Hindu God Shiva in their divine voices. As to the aim of Dhrupad, Sanyal and Widdess (ibid) quote my teacher, Shri Nirmlaya De’s Guru, Ustad Fariddudin Dagar, from the flyer of a music festival “This ancient music form is not for your entertainment, it is only for the delight of God, who is inherent in both the singer and the listener”. (p.38).
REFERENCES:
Brata, Sasthi.1968. My God Died Young. Hutchinson, London and New York, Harper, New York.
Breur, J. and Freud S. 1893. Studies on Hysteria. Standard Edition II.
Diamond, S.A. 2012. Why We Love Music and Freud Despised It? https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201211/why-we-love-music-and-freud-despised-it. Retrieved 20 April, 2016.
Freud S. 1914. The Moses of Michael Angelo. Standard Edition XIII.
Green, A. 1974. Surface Analysis, Deep Analysis (The Role of the Preconscious in Psychoanalytical Technique). 1974. International Review of Psycho-analysis 1: 415-423.
Lehtonen, K and Shaughnessy Michael F. 2015. Sigmund Freud’s Enigmatic Relationship to Music. International Journal of Advances in Psychology (IJAP) Volume 4, 2015. www.ij-psychol.org doi: 10.14355/ijap.2015.04.001. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
Kakar, S. 2008. Mad and Divine, Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World. Penguin Viking. New Delhi.
Reich, Wilhelm. Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, 1933.The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1946 (Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, translated by Theodore P. Wolfe).
Salmon, D. 2008. Bridging Music and Psychoanalytic Therapy. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy Vol 8 , No. 1 . https:/voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/450/368. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
Sanyal and Widdess. 2004. Dhrupad, Tradition and Performance in Indian Music. SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) Musicology Series. London.
[1] Dhrupad is the most ancient style of Hindustani classical music that has survived until today in its original form.
