-
Pergamon
0197-4556(95)00001-l
The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 353-357, 1995
Copyright 0 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All
rights reserved
0197-4556195 $9.50 + .OO
LULLABIES ARE TRANSFERENTIAL TRANSITIONAL SONGS: FURTHER
CONSIDERATIONS ON RESISTANCE IN MUSIC THERAPY
CORA L. DiAZ de CHUMACEIRO, PhD*
Recently, in an outstanding article in The Arts in
Psychotherapy, Austin and Dvorkin (1993) stressed the need for
music therapists to increase their knowl- edge about
patient-therapist resistances in musical and non-musical
manifestations in treatment (from Object Relations and Jungian
perspectives). Refreshingly, they stressed that contrary to much of
the music therapy literature, resistance is not something to be
eliminated, but instead offers a way toward under- standing the
patient (p. 426). Their preferred method of working through
resistances is (indirectly) via additional explorations in the
music. The authors concluded: We believe that music therapy has
reached a new point in its development. . . Along with other
psychoanalytically-oriented music thera- pists, we are attempting
to bridge the theory and tech- nique of psychoanalytic and music
therapy (p. 429).
This response focuses on further psychoanalytic implications of
these authors case of a patients re- sistance and its successful
resolution as a result of the uncovering of a hidden lullaby. A
41-year-old patient, who used her intellect as a defense against
feelings, throughout the session often obsessively interpreted her
actions verbally. However, when exploring the concept of powerful,
she played an original tune in a minor key and fast tempo (p. 427).
The thera- pist, on recognizing the absence of affect in her music
then requested that the patient play it again at a slower
tempo.
When the patient played slowly, a very differ- ent song emerged.
The patient became quiet
and still for the first time during the session. She said she
was experiencing sadness. She then was able to talk about the
sadness she ex- perienced as a child. The therapist asked her to
play a third time, again in the slow tempo, and suggested that she
sing to the little girl. The therapist chose to sing with her to
support her feelings. By the end of the song the patient was
crying. She said she &never realized that this song was a
lullaby and that when she wrote it as a child she wrote it to
soothe herself [italics added]. Due to the musical interventions
she was able to connect her thoughts with her feel- ings. Her
further associations indicated that she did not need to defend
against her feelings and the insight they brought. (Austin &
Dvorkin, 1993, p. 427)
This paper introduces the term transferential tran- sitional
music to integrate two interrelated psycho- analytic theories that
to date have been independently applied too infrequently in the
music therapy litera- ture (see Barclay, 1987; Goodman, 1981) due
to what can be called the fields general resistance to psycho-
analytic theories. Patients songs are transferential music
(Rosenbaum, 1963). Lullabies are transitional tunes (McDonald,
1970/ 1990). Patients lullabies, then, are transferential
transitional songs. After a brief presentation of the two theories
and a discussion of Austin and Dvorkins case, this term will also
be applied to a lullaby by Schumann.
*Cora L. Diaz de Chumaceiro is a clinical psychologist in
Caracas, Venezuela. She is also member of the Editorial Board of
The Arts in Psychotherapy.
353
-
354 CORA L. DfAZ de CHUMACEIRO
Transitional Tunes
McDonald (1970/1990) coined the term transi- tional tunes,
underscoring that up to the publication of her work, Winnicotts
(1953) concept of transi- tional phenomena had been applied by
psychoana- lysts almost exclusively upon tangible objects which
infants use as their first not me possession-bjects which make
their appeal through sight, smell, feel, and taste (p. 85).
Winnicott, though, had included the auditory sense when he termed
transitional ob- jects and transitional phenomena to designate the
experiential intermediate area between the fingers and stuffed
animals, between oral-erotic cravings and real object
relationships, between primary creativity and projection of
introjects, and between awareness and unawareness of being
indebted. According to this def- inition, then, an infants babbling
or the way an older child goes over a repertory of songs and tunes
while preparing for sleep [McDonalds emphasis] come within the
intermediate area as transitional phe- nomena (in McDonald,
1970/1990, p. 86; Winni- cott, 1953). In addition to objects that
may be charged with significance, a word or tune [emphasis added]
or a mannerism may become of vital importance for the infant when
falling asleep. These objects are all used as a defense against
anxiety, specially anxiety of depressive type. Perhaps some soft
object or type of object has been found and used by the infant, and
this then becomes what I am calling a transitional object (in
McDonald, 1970/1990, p. 86; Winnicott, 1953).
Moore and Fines (1990) definition of Winnicotts term included
the following:
By displacement from the original love object these sounds or
objects function later in life as transient, hypercathected, and
hypersymbolized maternal substitutes. They provide feelings of
self-sufficiency and counteract feelings of loss and abandonment.
They indicate the egos at- tempt to resolve an object relations
dilemma, the need to preserve the illusion of a loving, comforting
and soothing mother. (italics added, p. 207)
McDonald stressed that, in Winnicotts view, tran- sitional
phenomena are normal and ubiquitous. More- over, these experiences
with transitional objects are important to develop and maintain
reality testing and
are also early indicators of creativity and its develop- ment.
She then defined her term as follows:
A transitional tune has to be a familiar tune, frequently
filling the atmosphere between par- ent and child. It has to
provide a shared and comforting experience. In that the infant
hears it himself, he probably initially experiences the sensation
as though it were a part of himself, just as mother herself does
not at first exist as a person distinct and separate from himself.
(p. 89)
Initially, of course, it is impossible for the infant to ask
about the origin of the song or to whom it be- longs. Later, when
the child discovers how to make a reproduction of the tune-as a
result of others re- quests or due to self-motivation to sing it,
or by play- ing recordings of this music-being in charge and being
the prime mover of the process is the resulting feeling. The child
then is gradually liberated from parental dependence for the
production of comfort through music by selecting a particular tune.
In Mc- Donalds view, this transitional phenomenons value is the
creative avenue that it opens, facilitating a small childs mastery
of issues of separation and being alone while beginning gratifying
self-acquaintance in the world beyond the self. She also stressed
that when music is a transitional phenomenon, this subject may have
made an early and important impression in the childs life. It may
even be that a transitional tune is an essential early factor in
musical development. For children who have taken this primary step,
early ini- tiation in music lessons would seem natural, even
necessary, and almost irresistible (p. 89). (Also see Ostwald,
1973.)
McDonald found support for terming transitional tunes by
directly observing young children, in data on musicians self and
others biographies of their early lives, and in lullabies and
cradle songs in the music literature. She wrote:
The word lullaby is an onomatopoeic word, composed of lull and
bye, and thus a lull- aby is a song offered to an infant as a
lulling comfort at the time of separation. By definition, the
lullaby is a song intended for use as a tran- sitional tune, and
the words of many lullabies express this function of the music.
(italics in original, p. 95)
-
TRANSFERENTIAL TRANSITIONAL MUSIC 355
Songs of the Transference
In 1963, Rosenbaum termed patients musical evo- cations recalled
in psychoanalytic treatment songs of the transference. With
clinical examples, she am- ply demonstrated that,
in many patients the words of a song, with or without melody,
may be used as a defense ex- pression of otherwise anxiety laden
instinctual impulses. . . . [Tlhese lyrics, isolated from melody
and affect, are often resistance expres- sions specifically of
current transference atti- tudes presented in an obsessional way. .
. . [T]he fragments of a song reported during an hour may be dealt
with as if they were a man- ifest dream. (p. 258)
As a result of exploring the patients associations to the song,
as with dreams, one will discover in the conscious presentation of
these songs all the uncon- scious dreamwork mechanism of
condensation, dis- placement, secondary elaboration and over
determi- nation (p. 267). This material reflects the patients
current conflict.
Beyond Rosenbaums initial formulation, later, it was also amply
demonstrated that patients songs (with or without lyrics) reflected
transference as well as countertransference states (Diaz de
Chumaceiro, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1992a, 1993, in press). Transfer-
ence-countertransference in evoked music-and, in the case of music
therapy, in the music selected either by patients or therapists-is
also ubiquitous although the field has been resistant to recognize
this fact (Diaz de Chumaceiro , 1992b).
The Patients Lullaby
Austin and Dvorkins (1993) patients lullaby, composed in
childhood to comfort herself, seems to fulfill the criteria of a
transitional tune (McDon- ald, 1970/1990). Evidently, when the
music was played rapidly, the lullaby was hidden and unrecog-
nized. With obsessional speed, it served her uncon- scious
defensive purposes at that moment in the music therapy session.
This lullaby, though, was also her transferential song to the music
therapist (Rosen- baum, 1963), linked to sad experiences in the
mother- infant dyad. However, the interpretation of counter-
transferential aspects, reflected in the patients inter-
pretation of the music and in the music per se, beyond the scope
of these comments, is left to the authors.
Not mentioned in their vignette, it is relevant to underscore
that the therapist competently treated this music as if a manifest
dream when she recognized that the patient had isolated the affect
in the tune played at a fast (obsessional) tempo. Playing and
singing the music at a slower tempo, with repetitions, is paral-
leled in dream analysis when the dreamer repeats and associates to
different parts of the dream at a different pace. After playing her
music slowly, with the ther- apists support, the patient was able
to connect with her feelings of sadness-similar to the dynamics in
analytic treatment.
The authors mentioned that the patient played an original tune
(on an unknown instrument) and the therapist sang the song with the
patient. Thus it is unclear if the song had lyrics or they were
added later, or if they merely sang the instrumental music to-
gether. With such ambiguity it would be too specu- lative to make
further comments on these factors. What did this music sound like?
Were attempts made to trace the roots of her song to a tune or song
that had been presented by the original caretaker(s), in addi- tion
to the linking of early feelings?
Nevertheless, the patients lullaby is now posi- tively linked
with this therapist who helped her so much. As stated elsewhere
several years ago:
If the therapeutic experience has been success- ful, in the
absence of the therapist, the songs will be repeated and sung [or
hummed] men- tally as transitional objects, when needed. For- mal
treatment may end but the songs of the transference are
interminable. A song is never simply, only a song. A song in ones
heart, brain and mind is a voice that communicates. (Diaz de
Chumaceiro, 1987, pp. 31-32)
Now these terms have been integrated. Invariably, all lullabies
are transferential transitional songs, as is also evident in an
excerpt of Ostwalds (1993) ex- cellent psychobiographical study of
Robert Schu- manns (1840) Ich hab im Traum Geweinet (I Was Crying
in my Dream), based on Heine, from his well-known song cycle
Dichterliebe (op. 48, no. 13).
Robert Schumanns Lullaby
Peter Ostwald (1993) focused on Schumanns (1825) first
autobiography where at 15 years of age he
-
356 CORA L. DfAZ de CHUMACEIRO
had described his bond with his foster mother, Frau Ruppius, as
follows: She accomplished a great deal in the education of
children. I loved her. She was my second mother, and . I stayed
under her maternal supervision for two and a half years (Ostwald,
1985, p. 15). (Due to his mothers illness, requiring quar- antine,
he had been separated from her when he was 2 years old. Emotional
distance had then followed.)
Once every day I went over to my parents, writes Schumann, but
otherwise I did not con- cern myself about them any longer. He men-
tions additional symptoms, related most likely to the
discontinuities felt in relation to a lost maternal object: Still
very clear in my mem- ory is that I couldnt sleep the night before
mov- ing out of this house, and that I cried through- out the
entire night. Also once before, when Frau Rippius was away on a
trip, I got up alone during the night . . . and sat at the window,
crying bitterly, so that early in the morning they found me,
asleep, with tears rolling down my cheeks (Ostwald, 1985, pp.
15-16; emphasis added in Ostwald, 1993, p. 183)
In Ostwalds view, these memories appeared to have served as the
basis for Schumanns composition of his lied I Was Crying in my
Dream, when he was 30 years old. A paraphrased description of his
song follows (conserving Ostwalds English transla- tion of the
original German lyrics):
The lieds original key is E flat minor (marked softly). Alone (a
cappella), a baritone sings in a monotonously sustained melody with
only two tones (B flat and C flat), I cried and cried while dream-
ing, suggesting the wailing of a crying child. Five staccato chords
on the piano follow, in a slow dotted rhythm, the dominant and
tonic alternate. A funeral march is suggested by the muted drumming
on the piano. Silence. Alone, the singer continues: I dreamt that
you lay in your grave, moving into the key of C flat and is
answered by the pianos death march. An upward and downward wail of
the singer follows, I woke up, and the tears were still flowing
down from my cheek, with accented chords inter- rupting him. With
two chords, the piece returns to E flat minor-the home key. Then a
fermata (duration unspecified) (p 190).
In the second stanza, the first one is repeated, softly, again
followed by the same five gloomy pia-
nissimo chords. The lonely singer then sings: I dreamt that you
abandoned me, followed by the march. He continues: I woke up, with
a slight crescendo, one chord follows and was still crying, and
another chord followed by such long and bitter tears. Here, still
in the minor key, the pianist starts playing sustained, more
drawn-out chords, echoing the wailing effect of the voice,
acknowledg- ing the singers tears, and leading directly into the
third stanza (p. 190).
The singer and the pianist now are united, even more softly. The
singer, accompanied by two key- board voices, sings: I cried and
cried while dream- ing, I dreamt you were true to me still. In a
more hopeful mood and a crescendo, the tonality changes to A flat
minor. He sings: I woke up, and yet a flood of tears was still
flowing forth. Ostwald concludes: Two sustained chords, followed by
ghastly silence. Emptiness! Then, pianissimo, the piano plays five
chords, the funeral march again. Another dreadful silence,
punctuated by two staccato chords (p. 190). The song has ended.
Ostwald insists that to truly ap- preciate the power of this music,
reading about it is insufficient. The music must be heard! (p.
179).
In view of childhood traumata previous to Schu- manns
songwriting and other creative activities, Ostwald speculated that
this lied symbolizes, as Donald J. Marcuse puts it, a dialogue of
mother and infant of the most distressing and dysfunctional kind
(pp. 191-192). Nevertheless, with this com- position reflecting the
pain and terror of abandon- ment, Schumann mastered two
interrelated short and long-term objectives: (a) the integration of
his painful separation from Clara Wieck, his fiancee. (Her father,
in a rivalrous Oedipal triangulation, was impeding Schumanns
contact with the passion and support of his creative work as well
as threatening his reputa- tion), and (b) the desired synthesis of
affects and ideas in music.
This composition was a transferential transitional song in
Schumanns life. It was transitionally linked to his lost and dead
mother who sang, as well as transferentially linked to his living
loved Clara who he was in danger of losing. Even without knowledge
of this biographical material, affectively, this lied may
unconsciously serve a therapeutic function to others who include it
in their repertoire of classi- cal songs to be heard or sung. If
recalled in treat- ment by either patient or therapist, its
significance seems evident.
-
TRANSFERENTIAL TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
Concluding Remarks
Austin and Dvorkins excellent work on resistance reflects their
sustained energy to bridge psychoana- lytic theory and technique to
music therapy-an up- stream effort. Greater attention needs to be
given to the evocation of lullabies and cradle songs in all treat-
ment modalities, not just in the field of music therapy.
Therapists also can have hidden lullabies in their long-term
memory (see Diaz de Chumaceiro, in press). These patient-therapist
transferential-coun- tertransferential transitional music, which
includes tunes and songs, are reflections of the soul of the
individual who comes for individual or group treat- ment or for
supervision. Lullabies offer a unique op- portunity for healing and
learning that may not nec- essarily be expressed in another art
form, or in other subjects, in the same way-in spite of the
psychoan- alytic theory of the repetition compulsion.
When patients feel that their musical evocations/ productions
are misunderstood, if the resistances that are usually
countertransferentially induced are not re- solved, progress will
be impeded and premature flight from treatment may result; with
insufficient training in psychoanalytic principles, music
therapists will ig- nore the real reasons why their patients left.
As ther- apists, to be able to increase our skill and compe- tence,
we must continuously strive to identify resis- tances to ourselves,
to patients and to music per se in treatment as well as in everyday
life beyond work with family members and friends.
References
Austin, D. S., & Dvorkin, J. M. (1993). Resistance in
individual music therapy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 20,
423429.
Barclay, M. W. (1987). A contribution to a theory of music ther-
apy: Additional phenomenological perspectives on Gestalt- Qualitat
and transitional phenomena. Journal of Music Ther- apy, 24,
224238.
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1987). Induced song recall: A diag-
nostic and psychotherapeutic technique. (Doctoral dissertation, The
Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio). Dissertation Abstracts
International, 49138, p. 911. (University Microfilms Intema-
tional, 1988, No. 8807026)
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1988). La efectividad de la evocaci6n
inducida de canciones en psicoterapia [The effectiveness of induced
song recall in psychotherapy]. (Masters thesis, Uni- versidad Simon
Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela). Musters Ab- stracts International,
26/04, p. 454. (University Microfilms International, No.
13-32884)
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1990). Songs of the countertransfer-
ence in psychotherapy dyads. American Journal of Psychoanal- ysis,
50, 75-89.
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1992a). What song comes to mind?
Induced song recall: Transference-counter&transference in dy-
adic music associations in treatment and supervision. The Arts in
Psychotherapy, 19, 325-332.
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1992b). Transference-countertrans-
ference in psychology integrations for music therapy in the 1970s
and 1980s. Journal of Music Therapy, 24, 217-235.
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1993). Parapraxes in song recall: A
neglected variable. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 53,
225-235.
Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (in press). Unconsciously induced song
recall: The process of unintentional rather than so-called-
spontaneous evocations of music. American Journal of Psy-
choanalysis.
Goodman, K. (1981). Music therapy. In S. Arieti (Ed.), American
handbook of psychiatry, 2nd rev. ed. (Vol. 7, pp. 564-585). New
York: Basic Books.
McDonald, M. (1990). Transitional tunes and musical develop-
ment. In S. Feder, R. L. Karmel & Cl. H. Pollock (Eds.),
Psychoanalytic explorations in music, First Series (pp. 79-95).
Madison, CT: International Universities Press. (Original work
published 1970)
Moore, B. E., &Fine, B. D. (Eds.). (1990). Psychoanalytic
terms & concepts. New Haven, CT: The American Psychoanalytic
Association and Yale University Press.
Ostwald, P. (1973). Musical behavior in early childhood. Devel-
opmental Medical and Child Neurology, 15, 367-375.
Ostwald, P. (1985). Schumann: The inner voices of a musical
genius. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
Ostwald, P. (1993). Communication of affect and idea through
song; Schumanns I Was Crying in my Dream (op. 48, no. 13). In S.
Feder, R. L. Karmel & G. H. Pollock (Eds.), Psy- choanalytic
explorations in music, Second series (pp. 17% 193). Madison, CT:
International Universities Press.
Rosenbaum, J. B. (1963). Songs of the transference. American
Image, 20, 257-269.
Schumann, R. (1825). Autobiography. Robert Schumann, Haus,
Zwickau, Germany. Manuscript.
Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional
phe- nomena. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 48, 368-
372.