ABSTRACT
This introduction illustrates how psyche creatively interacts and resonates with the ubiquitous energized activated field of sound that surrounds us every day and puts forward a new model for working with these experiences called Archetypal Music Psychotherapy. A comparison of musicking and dreaming is implied. The main exploration focuses on how psyche communicates through musical symbols and how the analytic dyad might explore various responses within the consulting room. The argument is put forward that psyche is fundamentally musical and that this has implications for how to best work analytically with symbolic acoustic content. A balance is struck between classical Jungian perspectives and relevant post-Jungian thought from the wider world of psychoanalysis including Kalsched, Hillman, Civitarese, Klein, Kohut, Winnicott and Bion. Aspects of field theory are addressed within the context of a music-oriented analysis and particularly how improvisation can aid the developmental auditization of animated inner dynamics. Music is described as a territory or psychic space within which previously unrepresented void states can begin to find representation. Musical reverie is offered as a frame in order to listen into the leitmotifs of our imaginal habitat with its diatonic fantasias, parenthetical psychic melodies, sound-time continuum, destructive un-creations and zones of activation.
