Does the Psychoanalysis of Music Have a “Subject”?

n this chapter Samuel Wilson explores who or what provides the musical ‘subject’ that is interpreted psychoanalytically. Through a critical reading of a number of historic and contemporary sources, the author highlights perspectival and theoretical connections between psychoanalytic and musicological literatures. Three common trends are identified through the terms tangible, fictional, and fictive. These identities are considered in their interrelation (through acts of identification, for example). The author then problematises these terms in reference to the transindividual themes and processes that are foregrounded in some recent psychoanalytic and musicological writing.