When Psyche Sings: Jungian Music Psychotherapy

The experiential workshop continues to deepen the process of hearing what cannot yet be seen, and invites us to listen, locate and experience those acoustic images, both imaginal and material, that play a role in our affective and archetypal engagement with our world. We will explore the contribution that musical processes offer to the wholeness and teleology of the individuation process intra-personally, relationally, and collectively.

Joel Kroeker writes:

Dear workshop participants, 

Welcome to this exploration of the relationship between Music and Psyche. This kinship connection has been a long-held fascination of mine. For me (and perhaps for you too), music is everywhere in my life, both waking and sleeping. I listen to it, play it, imagine it, create it and even occasionally dream about it. In fact, I realized at a young age that the experience of being “in music” feels a lot like being “in a dream.” This initial musical dreamlike quality informed the next four decades of my life as I moved through my academic career (in composition and ethnomusicology), my music career (as composer, improvisational Jazz artist and singer-songwriter) and now as a music-centred psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. 

Eventually I had the rare opportunity to spend time with Jung’s grandson, Dieter Baumann, exploring together his musical experiences with his grandfather as well as Jung’s ideas about listening to the natural world (and even the voice of one’s patient) as music itself. These precious interactions felt, at times, as if I was sitting with old Jung himself, as we discussed these first hand musical moments, which amplified what I’d already explored deeply in Jung’s Collected Works. 

This relationship between musicking and dreaming has also informed how I hear and experience the world. For me, music is a territory or location for psycho-spiritual development, which transcends language, offering us a chance to hear what cannot yet be seen within ourselves. Music is a waking dream with a soundtrack and I’ve found it to be a rich realm for deeply contemplative practice. 

After working psychotherapeutically with hundreds of patients, families and groups, sharing music with audiences around the world and my own eventual formulation of Archetypal Music Psychotherapy, my passion for this enigmatic alchemical relationship between Music and Psyche still burns as bright as ever, and I’m thrilled that you’re considering to join us in this exploration.