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9781912691739

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The power that music exerts on human beings has been recognised since ancient times, but how and why it does so remains something of a mystery. As a psychoanalyst and music-lover, Roger Kennedy is well placed to undertake an examination of the effects of music on the mind and the relation of music to the unconscious. This book offers an accessible and engaged exploration of this fascinating area of investigation. -- Armand D'Angour, Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Jesus College, Oxford The book betrays the enormously wide reading, interests, and sympathies of its author, by his multiple points of reference. Roger Kennedy discusses in-depth ideas from composers, psychoanalysts, performers, philosophers, literary authors, and musicologists. Seeing music in the round may be the most important feature of this deeply original book. His literary style combines scholarship and clarity. As you would expect from a psychoanalyst, he is particularly interested in relationships: the relationships within composers' minds that have brought compositions into being, relationships between performers, critics and music lovers, relationships within pieces, between the notes themselves. I highly recommend this book. -- Francis Grier, composer and psychoanalyst Roger Kennedy's The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations is a masterful multidisciplinary account of the relationship between music and emotion. Drawing on infant research, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory as well as musicology and psychoanalysis, Kennedy leads his reader on a musical journey to the origins of musicality in infantile and social experience and its lifelong development in unconscious receptivity. -- Neil Vickers, Professor of English Literature and the Health Humanities, King's College London I found it fascinating throughout, and drew comfort from an underpinning narrative that seems to centre on the importance of listening. An inability to listen, rather than to simply hear, causes so many problems, but music forces us to listen, and makes us better at it. I also loved the notion of 'musicking', bringing all involved in music together, whether writing, listening, or playing. -- Mark Wigglesworth, internationally renowned Olivier Award-winning conductor '... a unique and thought-provoking read. Kennedy's multidisciplinary approach ensures every reader will learn something new, no matter what their area of expertise.' -- Rosie Olver * thecuspmagazine.com *

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Dr Roger Kennedy is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and an adult psychoanalyst. He was an NHS consultant in charge of the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital for nearly 30 years before going totally into private practice ten years ago. He was chair of The Child and Family Practice in Bloomsbury and is still a director there. His work includes being a training analyst and seeing adults for analysis and therapy, as well as children, families, and parents at his clinic. He is a past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and is well-known as an expert witness in the family courts. He has had 13 previous books published on psychoanalysis, interdisciplinary studies, and child, family and court work, as well as many papers.

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