Jungian Music Psychotherapy

Music is everywhere in our lives and all analysts are witness to musical symbols arising from their patient's psyche. However, there is a common resistance to working directly with musical content. Combining a wide range of clinical vignettes with analytic theory, Kroeker takes an in-depth look at the psychoanalytic process through the lens of musical expression and puts forward an approach to working with musical symbols within analysis, which he calls Archetypal Music Psychotherapy (AMP). Kroeker argues that we have lost our connection to the simple, vital immediacy that musical expression offers. By distilling music into its basic archetypal elements, he illustrates how to rediscover our place in this confrontation with deep psyche and highlights the role of the enigmatic, musical psyche for guiding us through our life. Innovative and interdisciplinary, Kroeker’s model for working analytically with musical symbols enables readers to harness the impact of meaningful sound, allowing them to view these experiences through the clarifying lens of depth psychology and the wider work of contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Jungian Music Psychotherapy is a groundbreaking introduction to the ideas of Archetypal Music Psychotherapy that interweaves theory with clinical examples. It is essential reading for Jungian analysts, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, music therapists, academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, music studies, consciousness studies, and those interested in the creative arts.

Through a theoretical and practical exploration of Jungian and post-Jungian concepts surrounding image, this book moves beyond the visual scope of imagery to consider the presence and expression of music and sound, as well as how the psyche encounters expanded images – archetypal, personal or cultural – on both conscious and unconscious levels. By closely examining music in film, Nagari considers music’s complementary, enhancing, meaningful, and sometimes disruptive, contribution to expressive images. Chapters present a Jungian approach to music in film, highlighting how ‘music-image’ functions both independently and in conjunction with the visual image, and suggesting further directions in areas of research including music therapy and autism. Divided into three cumulative parts, Part I explores the Jungian psychological account of the music-image; Part II combines theory with practice in analysing how the auditory image works with the visual to create the ‘film as a whole’ experience; and Part III implements a specific understanding of three individual film cases of different genres, eras and styles as psychologically scrutinised ‘case histories’. Music as Image will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of applied psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology, music, film and cultural studies. With implications for music therapy and other art-based therapies, it will also be relevant for practising psychotherapists.

While transference has been fully described in the literature, countertransference has been viewed as its ugly sibling, and hence there are still not as many reflective accounts or guidance for trainees about how to handle difficult emotions, such as shame and envy and conflict in the consulting room. As a counterpoint, this book provides an integrative guide for therapists on the concept of countertransference, and takes a critical stance on the phenomenon, and theorising, about the "so-called" countertransference, viewing it as a framework to explore the transformative potential in managing strong emotions and difficult transactions. With an explicit focus on teaching, this book informs therapeutic practice by mixing theories and case studies from the authors' own clinical and teaching experiences, which involves the reader in case studies, reflection and action points. Countertransference is explored in a wide range of clinical settings, including in reflective practice and in research in the field of therapy, as well as in art therapy and in the school setting. It also considers countertransference in dream interpretation, in the supervision and teaching environment and in work with groups and organisations. Introduction to Countertransference in Therapeutic Practice offers psychotherapists and counsellors, both practicing and in training, a comprehensive overview of this important concept, from its roots in Freud’s work to its place today in a global, transcultural society.

Jungian Psychotherapy with Medical Professionals guides therapists, clinicians, and healthcare workers through the transformative healing process of Jungian psychology, demonstrating how the new spirit of medicine will originate from the relationship between the healer and the healed. Through extensive experience and scientific research gathered over the past four decades working closely with physicians, Suzanne Hales presents the telling of their stories that have been historically hushed or hidden away. Hales offers a lifeline for healthcare workers as she weaves together the stories of physicians and their patients with gripping honesty, presenting an intimate glimpse of what happens in the lives of healers and the healed. The book offers support to the healer in need of healing, provides hope for wholeness and restoration, and advocates for those who spend their lifetime advocating for others. The book is of great interest to Jungian analysts, therapists, and trainees, and it is essential reading for anyone working in healthcare, including physicians and healers of all kinds in the landscape of modern medicine.

More than an insightful psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung was the twentieth century's greatest articulator of the primacy of mind in nature, a view whose origins vanish behind the mists of time. Underlying Jung's extraordinary body of work, and providing a foundation for it, there is a broad and sophisticated system of metaphysical thought. This system, however, is only implied in Jung's writings, so as to shield his scientific persona from accusations of philosophical speculation. The present book scrutinizes Jung’s work to distil and reveal that extraordinary, hidden metaphysical treasure: for Jung, mind and world are one and the same entity; reality is fundamentally experiential, not material; the psyche builds and maintains its body, not the other way around; and the ultimate meaning of our sacrificial lives is to serve God by providing a reflecting mirror to God’s own instinctive mentation. Embodied in this compact volume is a journey of discovery through Jungian thoughtscapes never before revealed with the depth, force and scholarly rigor you are about to encounter.

The voice is the most powerful and widely used instrument in music therapy. This book demonstrates the enormous possibilities for personal change and growth using a new, voice-based model of psychotherapy where the sounds of the voice are expressed, listened to and interpreted in order to access unconscious aspects of the self and retrieve memories, images and feelings from the past. Combining theory with practice, the book explains the foundations of vocal psychotherapy and goes on to explore its usage in clinical practice and the various techniques involved. The book integrates important concepts from depth psychology such as regression, reenactment and working with transference and counter-transference with the practice of vocal music therapy. Drawing on over twenty years of research, the author uses case studies to illustrate specific vocal interventions, including improvisation techniques such as vocal holding, free associative singing and psychodramatic singing. Vocal Psychotherapy highlights the value of voice work as an integral part of the psychotherapeutic process and provides a model of advanced clinical work that will be essential reading for music and creative arts therapists.

Alchemical symbols are part of popular culture, most recently popularised in the Harry Potter books. Alchemy intrigued Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. It inspired him as he wrote ‘the Red Book’ - the journal of his voyage of internal discovery. He devoted much of his life to it, using alchemical symbols as metaphors for unconscious processes. Alchemy and Psychotherapy explores the issue of alchemy in the consulting room and its application to social and political issues. This book argues against the dominant discourse in contemporary psychotherapy - scientific materialism - and for the discovery of spiritual meaning. Alchemy and Psychotherapy has four main sections: ‘Alchemy and meaning’ - looks at the history of alchemy, particularly the symbol of the coniunctio - sacred marriage - a metaphor for the therapeutic relationship. 'The symbolic attitude’ - explores working with dreams, fairytales, astrology and the body: each of which is a symbolic language. ‘The spirit and the natural world’ - discusses the concept of 'burn out' - of therapists, our ecological resources, the mystical aspects of quantum physics and the philosophical underpinning of symbol formation. ‘Clinical Applications’ - shows alchemy’s use with victims of abuse, those struggling to secure gender identity, in anorexia and in ‘social healing’ - atonement and restorative justice - which apply the idea of the coniunctio. Alchemy and Psychotherapy is illustrated throughout with clinical examples, alchemical pictures and poetry which emphasise that alchemy is both a creative art and a science. Bringing together contributors from a wide range of disciplines, Dale Mathers and contributors show that therapy is both art and science, that the consulting room is the alchemical laboratory, and that their research is their creative engagement. Alchemy and Psychotherapy will be a valuable resource for practitioners, students at all levels of psychotherapy, analytical psychology, psychoanalysis and creative, art-based therapies and for creative practitioners (in film, literature and performing arts) who draw on Jung’s ideas.