C. G. Jung, Music and Music Therapy

From early on in his career, C. G. Jung was acutely aware of the powerful archetypal energies present in music. As such, he had a complex relationship with it, and accorded it a somewhat arm‘s-lenght and guarded respect. As a consequence, through the course of his long career, he did not attempt to explore its full implications for his theory of archetypes. However, towards the end of his life, he became acquainted with the application of music to psycho therapy as explored by Margret Tilly, and having observed her give a demonstration of her method, he become convinced that music has enormous therapeutic potential and that it could be used to access areas of the unconscious rarely accessed by other psychotherapeutic means. In his own personal experience and in his analytical work with his patients, Jung employed other forms of artistic expression: the visual arts and storytelling. It is no wonder, then, that the therapeutic value of these other forms of selfexpression have been explored and described in detail in the Jungian literature. However, little attention has been paid to the auditory mode of perception and to the acoustic as a means of symbolic self-expression. In this volume, the author, who is a music therapist oriented to Depth psychology, has undertaken to remedy this neglect by presenting a systematic theory, grounded in depth psychology, of the place that music occupies in psychotherapy. Starting from the premise that the unconscious is the true locus of crativity, and that music is a a system of acoustic symbols, he uncovers the symbolic and archetypal use of music in myths, fairy tales, and ancient rituals, and he outlines its traditional role in maintaining psychosocial hygiene. He then sets forth how music therapy techniques can be used to achieve such Jungian goals as individuation and relationship-oriented self-realisation.