C.G. Jung Society of Atlanta

Allen Bishop

Music and the Internal World - Lecture

November 11 Friday Lecture 7:30 pm
members: $20; non-members $25; students $10

Over the last 10 years I have been leading a course entitled “Music and the Internal World” for students in Pacifica Graduate Institutes doctoral program in clinical psychology. This course emerged from the confluence of my lifelong interest in classical piano music and Pacifica’s support of interdisciplinary studies in the clinical curriculum. The premise for this course is my belief that our emotional responses to music are analogous to the countertransference listening and responsiveness we provide to our patients deeply repressed song.

Susannah Langer (1943) points out in her essay on Significance in Music that “human feelings are much more congruent with musical forms than with the forms of language, music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth language cannot approach.” What a paradox, to be working in a craft which focuses on affective experience while using a tool (language) which seems barely up to the task. It is my contention that the focus on musical and artistic elements of psychoanalysis will help reframe our attentional capacities away from language and to the music of the hour which involves the body, paralinguistic cues, silences (and the generation of states of solitude) and the metabolizing of projective identifications. In addition, I will argue for the importance of facing the marginalized muse (artist) in each of us as a prerequisite for being able to help our patients whose creativity is suffocated by anxiety and defenses

Langer concludes her essay on Significance in Music by stating the “music is our myth of the inner life-a young, vital and meaningful myth, of recent inspiration and still in its vegetative growth.” It is this assertion the urges me on to exploring the interface of psychoanalysis and musical experience.

Music and the Internal World - Workshop

November 12, Saturday Workshop 10:00am - 5:00pm
members: $60; non-members $70; students $50
CEUs (6 core hours): $15

(includes lecture if paid before lecture)

This workshop will include an experience of music and dreaming as well as showing selected video clips to highlight important aspects of the creativity process (Glenn Gould and Cecilia Bartoli). I will be challenging the audience to re-engage their marginalized creative muse.

Allen Bishop is a psychoanalyst, teacher, and pianist living in Montecito, California, with his wife Dena. Allen is the immediate president of the Santa Barbara Music Club, and is the founding Director of the Santa Barbara Beethovenfest. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the American Beethoven Society.

While Allen has had a life-long interest in the piano and the music of Beethoven, it is only in the last 10 years that he has had the opportunity to study seriously with teachers including Peter Yazbeck, Betty Oberacker, and Glory Fisher. He has performed frequently in the Music Club Concert Series and the Beethovenfest. As co-founder of the Montecito Chamber Players, he has performed at numerous retirement venues in and around Santa Barbara. Allen continues to serve as Chair of the Clinical Psychology Department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. His website is : http://www.allenbishop.com/