Ego Boundaries Research Articles

KRISTEVAN CONCEPTION OF ABJECTION IN MURIEL SPARK AND CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S FEMALE NARRATIVES

Viewing linguistic and semiotic processes as constitutive of self, Kristeva emphasizes the role of abjection in the construction of female subjectivity. This paper aims to scrutinize the function of this Kristevan conception in two short stories written by women recounting the experiences of their female protagonists: Muriel Spark’s “You Should Have Seen the Mess” (1958) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1899). Abjection corresponds to an in-between state of subjectivity in which the distinction between the subject and the object is blurred, and the thing that violates ego boundaries is regarded as a threat to self. Yet, this experience is necessary for the subject to complete the subjectivization process. Revolving around an utter sense of abjection, these works reflect the overwhelming impact of this feeling on the protagonists’ lives, their obsessive attachment to and abhorrence for the abject, their hindrance from a relationship with the other due to a shattered subjectivity as well as their problematic position in relation to the semiotic and symbolic linguistic realms. Consequently, female subjectivity is regarded as an on-going social process rather than a finished one in both texts, whereby abjection is part of socialization processes which inform women’s relationship with their society.

Thinking in schizophrenia and the social phenomenology of thought insertion

ABSTRACT Patients suffering from delusions of thought insertion (TI) report that external agents of different nature have placed thoughts into their minds. The symptom involves distressing feelings of intromission and exposition, loss of mental privacy, diminished ego boundaries, and a – often neglected – peculiar “physicality”. A dominant approach within cognitive sciences characterizes TI as involving alterations in the experience of being the author of certain thoughts. For the advocates of this so-called Standard Approach to TI, the absence of a sense of agency for certain thoughts would lead to their externalization, this explaining the general structure of the clinical reports. In this paper, I problematize the phenomenological picture of everyday thoughts that the standard approach adopts when trying to make sense of TI. I claim that the standard approach neglects two more fundamental aspects of TI, namely the multimodal nature of thinking in psychosis and the deeply social dimension of the phenomenology of delusions in schizophrenia. After this, a broader descriptive phenomenological characterization of TI is provided. Finally, I establish some connections between the characterization of TI developed here and current research in social perception and clinical practice.

The ego in psychedelic drug action - ego defenses, ego boundaries, and the therapeutic role of regression.

The ego is one of the most central psychological constructs in psychedelic research and a key factor in psychotherapy, including psychedelic-assisted forms of psychotherapy. Despite its centrality, the ego-construct remains ambiguous in the psychedelic literature. Therefore, we here review the theoretical background of the ego-construct with focus on its psychodynamic conceptualization. We discuss major functions of the ego including ego boundaries, defenses, and synthesis, and evaluate the role of the ego in psychedelic drug action. According to the psycholytic paradigm, psychedelics are capable of inducing regressed states of the ego that are less protected by the ego's usual defensive apparatus. In such states, core early life conflicts may emerge that have led to maladaptive ego patterns. We use the psychodynamic term character in this paper as a potential site of change and rearrangement; character being the chronic and habitual patterns the ego utilizes to adapt to the everyday challenges of life, including a preferred set of defenses. We argue that in order for psychedelic-assisted therapy to successfully induce lasting changes to the ego's habitual patterns, it must psycholytically permeate the characterological core of the habits. The primary working principle of psycholytic therapy therefore is not the state of transient ego regression alone, but rather the regressively favored emotional integration of those early life events that have shaped the foundation, development, and/or rigidification of a person's character - including his or her defense apparatus. Aiming for increased flexibility of habitual ego patterns, the psycholytic approach is generally compatible with other forms of psychedelic-assisted therapy, such as third wave cognitive behavioral approaches.

Religious Service Attendance and Religious and Secular Organizational Engagement in the United Kingdom

AbstractThe study uses nationally representative data to examine whether the moral freighting Putnam and Campbell (2010) propose, based on American experiences, may apply to overall British society. Specifically, it tests whether religious service attendance increases religious or secular organizational activities, possibly due to moral freighting that encourages religious congregants to practice their faith, transcending ego boundaries and self‐interest. It is also necessary to determine if engagement in religious or secular organizational activities elevates the degree of religious service attendance, thus forming a bidirectional association. The study employs the maximum likelihood‐structural equation modeling (ML‐SEM) method to verify the proposed reciprocity. The empirical tests confirm that a synergistic reciprocal relationship is established between religious service attendance and religious organizational engagement, and that religious service attendance increases secular organizational engagement. However, secular organizational engagement does not make a bidirectional contribution to religious service attendance.

Disorder of Selfhood in Schizophrenia: A Symptom or a Gestalt?

Introduction: The concept of schizophrenia (SCZ) was originally associated with a disorder of formal strata of the self. During the last two decades, empirical studies have demonstrated a selective hyper-aggregation of self-disorders in the SCZ spectrum. As with other scientific research areas, the role of self-disturbances in SCZ has been up for debate in various disciplines including cognitive sciences, philosophy of mind, and psychopathology. Several philosophical papers have used the psychopathological phenomena of “thought insertion” as an alleged example of a complete loss of minimal selfhood. In the field of psychopathology, it has been claimed that self-disorders may comprise a transdiagnostic phenotype. Common to these approaches is the underlying assumption that self-disorders reflect well-delineated and isolated symptoms akin to the notion of symptom in the medical model. The aim of this paper was to argue that the clinical manifestation of self-disturbances is to be seen as aspects of a Gestalt of disturbed experiential selfhood. Methods: Seven videotaped interviews of patients with SCZ who were emblematic of very diverse symptomatological constellations were selected and jointly watched and discussed by the authors, who reached a consensus assessment. The interviews were semi-structured and narrative in nature in order to obtain faithful self-descriptions according to the standards of phenomenologically oriented interviews. For the purpose of this article, we chose 4 videos from which excerpts were verbatim transcribed and translated from Danish into English. Results: The patients describe unique combinations of various psychopathological phenomena such as diminished sense of embodied self-presence, loss of ego boundaries, diminished sense of self, alienation and objectification of the experiential processes, mirror-phenomena, and Schneiderian passivity phenomena. Discussion: Through an interweaving of the four vignettes and their subsequent psychopathological discussions, we argue that the invariant commonality across the different symptomatic expressions in these patients resides in a Gestalt of pervasive disturbance of self-experience. From a phenomenological perspective, these self-disturbances target a basic structure of phenomenal consciousness, namely, the first-person givenness of experience. We conclude that self-disorders reflect a trait-instability in the most basic structures of consciousness in SCZ and that its clinical manifestations are to be seen as aspects of a particular Gestalt rather than appearing as separate and well-delineated symptoms.

Psychosomatics Of Skin Diseases And Representation Of Mental Space

The concept of mental space and the role of the skin in differentiating its boundaries during ontogenesis are considered. Skin diseases (atopic dermatitis and psoriasis) are considered as psychosomatic manifestations of separation trauma, which correlate with two tendencies – “to fusion” and “to encapsulate”, respectively. The study involved 72 women aged 20–40 years, (30 healthy, 17 suffering from psoriasis and 25 atopic dermatitis). Using the “Spatial Self Questionnaire” technique, three types of spatial Ego boundaries are determined: bodily, social and symbolic. It is proved that different experimental groups have a different profile of representations of the boundaries of the Ego compared to the control group. The body boundary of the Ego in the group “atopic dermatitis” is interpreted as super-permeable, and in the group “psoriasis” — as super-nonpermeable. In the “atopic dermatitis” group, the influence of separation trauma manifests itself in confusion when differentiating oneself from others (social boundaries of the Ego), and in the “psoriasis” group — in difficulties when correlating oneself with the outside world (symbolic boundary of the Ego).

Living with Long-Term Conditions.

I always advise my students to stay on the blunt end of the needle. Of course, this is advice that we cannot always follow, and few of us will achieve such easy irony in the days leading up to our own deaths. We know ourselves to be mortal, but a common feature of the medical tribe is our denial of this obvious fact. Denial is a common enough defence mechanism, and sometimes it works. If we considered our own likely eventual morbidities every time we treated a patient we would be care-worn indeed. But the unintended consequence of our ego boundaries, our semi-detached relationship to the suffering of others, is that we may fail to truly see the burdens imposed on our patients, both by …

“Oppressed by Sensual Delight”: On a Lesbian Relationship with Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata

This paper explores Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata (1919) through the experience of a lesbian relationship—a relationship that extends from the Sonata as experienced by a violist and scholar, to Clarke herself as a performer and composer. Inspired by the work of Suzanne Cusick, I examine the musical elements of the Viola Sonata that invite and enable a lesbian relationship in the music. Such elements include existence outside the phallic economy, porous ego boundaries, and a fluid positioning within the power/pleasure/intimacy triad. A central theme of Clarke’s compositional style is embodiment, which furthers the potential for a lesbian experience of the Viola Sonata through “body-aware” and performer-centric techniques. The poetic inscription for the Sonata, lines from Alfred de Musset’s “La nuit de mai,” serves to further construct a musical narrative of embodiment through the relationship of Poet and Muse. Without claiming that Clarke was a lesbian, this paper sheds light on the Viola Sonata by considering the relationships between performer, composer, and listener in a lesbian musical analysis.

СУЩНОСТЬ И ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ ДЕТЕРМИНАНТ ДИСКУРСА АУТОКОММУНИКАЦИИ КАК ВНУТРЕННЕГО ДИАЛОГА

The paper presents the interdisciplinary analysis of the determinants of the system of self-communication discourse and internal dialogue as the forms of objectivation of human mental content focused on some actions for meeting some objectives. The author describes discourse as integration of communication and language processes in self-understanding and personal identity. Contextually determined and dynamic self-communication discourse, as a way of acquirement of new senses and confirmation of old ones, verbalizes current personal values. The study results reveal the characteristics and relations of the internal dialogue discourse determinants within the human objectivity–subjectivity continuum. Discourse determinants prescribe its context and rules and include the prototype place and agents with their motives and objectives. Self-positions manifested in Self and Non-Self (Other Self) binary self-predications form the core pair of agents. The modality of a person’s attitude to own Self-positions makes their communications a dialogue or a monologue on the boundary of their sub-territories as a discourse prototype place. The degree of discourse agency, its closeness within the prototype place, or transgression openness depends on the complexity and differentiation of Self-concept and ego boundaries functionality. The frustration of meta-necessity to keep self-confidence and self-acceptance by reassessment and reformation of interrelations of Self-positions determines the motives and objectives of self-communication. The common goal of self-organization is implemented through the internal dialogue in the form of institutionalization, verification, and integration of their Self-predications. Status-role characteristics of agents and functionality of discourse prototype place determine the specificity of its motives and objectives according to the systemic effects of Self-organization.

Psychological Differences Between Greek Artists With and Without History of Major Psychopathology

ABSTRACT Investigation of the relationship between creativity and psychopathology has yielded mixed results with few studies investigating the impact of psychopathology on creativity among professional artists. To address this gap, the present study compared 115 living Greek artists, with and without major psychiatric disorder, using self-report questionnaires measuring defense styles (DSQ-40), ego boundaries (BQ-18), and early trauma inventory (ETI-SR-SF). An open-ended exploratory questionnaire inquired about the effects of their psychological issues, upon their creative work. Results showed that artists with psychiatric disorder had thinner ego boundaries, employed more immature defense mechanisms, and reported higher rates of childhood trauma as well as expressing their creative endeavor as a “need” rather than “desire” and relied on their creative work as the sole means of livelihood.

Disturbance of Ego-Boundary Enaction in Schizophrenia

The psychopathology of schizophrenic conditions is today often characterized merely in diverse and disjunctive symptomatic terms. Classically, however, what was understood to underpin and unify such diverse symptoms was a disturbance to the 'self' or 'ego,' especially in that ego's boundaries. As psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories have become less influential in psychiatry, concepts like 'self' or 'ego,' 'self-other distinction' or 'ego boundary,' have become less popular as psychopathological organizers, with the result that the very idea of distinctively 'schizophrenic' conditions has itself also appeared to want for validity. Yet within the philosophy of psychology, enactivism provides a new naturalistic framework for understanding the emergence and maintenance of the self-other distinction. This framework considers the distinction neither as something constituted a priori, nor as something showing up within experience, but rather as a continuously enacted achievement. The contention of this article is that an enactivist perspective provides us with the apparatus to retheorize the conception of ego boundaries, contribute to the reunification of the 'schizophrenia' concept, and inform the provision of therapies targeted at the schizophrenic diathesis itself.

Why Schizophrenia Is so Relevant to Enaction and to Clinical Ethics: Naturalizing the Transcendental and the Risk of Stigmatizing

Why Schizophrenia Is so Relevant to Enaction and to Clinical Ethics:Naturalizing the Transcendental and the Risk of Stigmatizing Daria Dibitonto (bio) The mutual interest between embodied cognitive sciences, in particular enactivism, and phenomenological psychopathology has significantly increased in the last 15 years (Colombetti, 2013; Dibitonto, 2014; Fuchs, 2009; Fuchs, Sattel, & Henningsen, 2010; Parnas et al., 2011; Sass & Parnas, 2003, 2007; Sass, Parnas, Zahavi, 2011; Stanghellini, 2004). Gipps's article contributes to this field of research by defining ego boundaries in an enactivist framework to explain how the distinction self-other emerges and is maintained in ordinary healthy conditions, and how it is weakened and impaired in cases of schizophrenia. Gipps's first tenet is: The ego-boundary is enacted equiprimordially with experience, that is, it coarises with the self's perception of its world. Nevertheless, it cannot be considered a mere part of experience, as it is rather its condition of possibility: the ego-boundary is a formal and transcendental (i.e. structural and constitutive) aspect of experi ence. The corresponding schizophrenia-tenet is: schizophrenic disturbances of the ego-boundary are disturbances of alterity: primary disturbances of the very constitution of the self as it arises in defining itself in contradistinction to a perceived other or to a perceived environment. The enactivist account is then presented as an ontological account, describing biologically existing phenomena that are, as such, naturalistically investigable - in contrast to the mainstream epistemological account that considers schizophrenia as a theoretical construct. For example, instead of regarding voice-hearing or thought insertion as failures in self-awareness (in the form of a mistaken inference: "I am not aware of being the author of this piece of inner mulling, therefore it must be ego alien"), the enactivist account regards such phenomena as truly and originally ego-alien, as constituted ab initio as non-ego. According to Gipps, subjective feelings of 'ontological insecurity' (Laing, 1959), [End Page 107] such as "I cannot know whether I exist" (Hesnard, 1909), thus correspond to a de facto disordered constitution of the ego-boundary. Gipps's account shows the theoretical usefulness of the distinction between the empirical (lived) ego and transcendental (structural and constitutive) ego. As Gipps explicitly mentions this key philosophical point, it is odd that there are no references to Blankenburg's The Loss of Natural Self-Evidence (1971). Regarding the constitution of the self, Blankenburg differentiates the natural, empirical, experiencing self, from the transcendental self that structures one's experiences. The clinical relevance of this theoretical distinction is that it allows us to distinguish between neurotic and schizophrenic insecurity: neurotic insecurity pertains to the empirical self, whereas schizophrenic insecurity concerns the transcendental self. A disorder in the empirical self does not imply a disorder in the transcendental self—and vice versa. The schizophrenic patient can indeed show a certain self-assurance (or reassurance), especially regarding delusions or hallucinations, whereas the neurotic patient can be highly insecure without any weakening of her ego-boundary (Blankenburg, 1971, 100–101). But Blankenburg, even though he considers the relation between the empirical and transcendental self as a continuous, dynamical process, repeatedly underlines the a priori character of the transcendental self: it is something occurring "before" the empirical self. His patient Anne for instance precisely complains of the lack of something preceding experience which she calls something "before that," before that ordinary practical understanding also known as "common sense." Blankenburg thus shows the relevance of the a priori for the life-world by engaging with psychopathology: according to him the structuring self can be experienced in its a priori function only when it is weakened or disordered; otherwise it is transparent to experience (Blankenburg, 1971, pp. 83–92). Following Blankenburg's view, it is then doubtful that the transcendental enaction of the ego-boundary is equiprimordial with experience, as Gipps maintains. This is a key theoretical point: if the transcendental self is no longer considered as an a priori given boundedness of the self, but rather as a self-boundary that is equiprimordially constituted with active and receptive experience, the transcendental level of experience as such can be reconceived as to become naturalistically investigable. Such enaction of the ego-boundary as equiprimordial with experience...

Division (Architecture 5), and: “Adopt” as in “a Program” (Architecture 11), and: The Second Idea of Absence (Architecture 12), and: Nest (Architecture 17), and: Nest III (Architecture 102)

Division (Architecture 5), and: “Adopt” as in “a Program” (Architecture 11), and: The Second Idea of Absence (Architecture 12), and: Nest (Architecture 17), and: Nest III (Architecture 102) John Gallaher (bio) Division (Architecture 5) Let’s watch the process one more time. During the first stageof mitosis, prophase, we see the classic chromosome structure.Notice the DNA condensing. Outside, my neighboris watering the new tree they plantedto replace the one they had to remove, and in both her and the tree,microtubules are appearing and the nuclear membraneis breaking down. So many places to go wrong:metaphase, when the chromosomes are alignedat the center of the cell, or anaphase,as the chromosomes are moving apart.Telophase is then marked by the appearanceof new nuclear membranes. And this is the endof mitosis. About 80 minutes, and two new cellsare ready to grow and perform their specialized functions. I wasn’t there when my mother died. My brother Richard and Ihad been there, called by our dad, when her organsstarted shutting down. But when we got there, she rallied,her organs started functioning again, and we had work,so we left, and then she died. I can see her, though, as she was then,wax statue, Alzheimer’s to a stroke to a coma, in and out.My father is still fighting, demanding it was dementia instead.It’s become his meal of rocks. He took care of herthat last year, and several things I was sayingabout Alzheimer’s care, playing music, etc.,he didn’t like or want and turned back, folding into himself. We want it to be our show, how we die, but it isn’t.My mother, younger, told us that if she went senile,we were to take her out to the backyard and shoot her.She didn’t mean it, but what someone means at a moment like this [End Page 41] is complicated, as the slow milling of the oceansand land, geese rising from a lakeand back down, some clock beneath these hills. [End Page 42] “Adopt” as in “a Program” (Architecture 11) Something falls from the sky. And we all know anything that fallsfrom the sky is a gift from the gods. Grape seeds maybe. Bread.Lottery checks. It’s the premise of the Cargo cultsdotted across the 20th century, deriving from the beliefthat ritualistic acts such as the building of an airplane runwaywill result in the appearance of wealth. It’s logical conclusionsfrom faulty premises. As one might imagine a questionof chickens and eggs a real question, formed under conditionsof social stress, often linked to an ancestral efficacythought to be recoverable by a returnto traditional morality, characterizing the present stateas a dismantling of the social order, that social hierarchyand ego boundaries have broken down,and we need to make whatever place great again. You have to be careful not to fall in love with the spectacle. Spectaclesare easy. There’s also the rest of the day to consider, as the torsoof Apollo whispers: how old and broken things can create in onea fondness for memes and tote bags. “The themeof this year’s Fall Harvest Ball is ‘Fall Harvest,’” the flyer proclaimsthat fell from the bulletin board at the community centeras I passed. The theme is theme. We write it on our masksand go running. We’re exotic aliens to ourselves. I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008,wanting to get a little something to take back to the Midwest,and their floor-wide installation turned out to be tractors. It’s allin how you define it. The theme unfolds, cult to denominationto nation, adopting a program, adopting a pet, a child,from the Latin, adoptio, from ad- ‘to’ + optio ‘choosing.’ To choose.I’m on a fact-finding mission to the center of my soul, working outmy family tree, birth and adoption, 2,000 people so farand still no mother. I wishI believed in ghosts. Maybe I halfway believe in ghosts. [End Page...

Psychological Scenarios and Indicators of Non-Equilibrium State of the Person at the Borderline Situation

The paper describes the structural and procedural picture of the unity of the non-equilibrium state of the individual and a borderline situation. The subject of the study was limited to the situation of loss, for which it was necessary to identify possible scenarios and systematize psychological indicators. The study employed an integrative analysis and synthesis of theoretical and applied works in the fields of personality psychology, crisis and clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and psychological counseling. The unity of one’s state and situation appeared to provide the psychological links of the event, one’s personal predispositions, interpretations, experience, and behavior. The situation unfolds in the external and internal (mental state) reality, which do not coincide. An essential role in correlating of information about the state of the internal and the external and the emergence of a particular state belongs to the psychological boundaries of the individual. The situation of loss reflects the disintegration of one’s internal and external realities and the psychological impasse: the time-space "in between" the previous ego, the future ego and the present ego, which is partially destroyed. The uncontrolled value-semantic "hanging" correlates with the critical non-equilibrium state of a person. The content markers of their unity are confusion, ambivalence, "breakdown" of the ego boundaries, temporal effects, semantic disregulation, disintegration, alienation, and a burnout. Intolerance to ambivalence of a situation means getting into a border situation. The possibility of a constructive or destructive way out of this situation is indicated by affective expansion or semantic dysregulation and disintegration of the personality. Leaving a borderline situation behind requires a change of the state, attitudes, values, and meanings by restoring the eroded or destroyed boundaries of the ego. For this purpose, the borders and the situation connected with them must acquire the status of a problem and a "place" of opportunity in one’s mind.

A Grounded Theory Analysis of Inhibition, Ego Boundaries and Risk-avoiding in an L2 Community

A Grounded Theory Analysis of Inhibition, Ego Boundaries and Risk-avoiding in an L2 Community

The psychological factors of Ukrainian women' victim behavior formation

The research is devoted to the problem of the victim behavior of modern women. The results of empirical research identify specific factors shaping of modern women' victim behavior (lack of identification, distorting the perception of their own emotions, reduced capacity for adequate evaluation of own and others' behavior, the surrounding situation, violation of ego boundaries, using specific neurotic defense mechanisms etc). The article discusses the role of negative micro-and macro-social factors in the formation of the victim behavior of a modern woman. The mechanisms of the parent-child relations psycho-traumatic factors' influence on the personality of a woman are empirically revealed. The model of the formation of modern women' victim behavior and set of victimhood manifestation indicators are presented. The basic directions of prevention and correction of victim behavior of the person are determined. The received data could be used in choosing appropriate strategies and tactics of psychological intervention and psychological support of victim women suffering from violence and abusive behavior.

The Unbearable Weight of Truth: Carrie in Homeland

ABSTRACTThe pursuit of hidden truth and the subtle lies we tell ourselves, the barriers or iron curtains erected that impede a deeper connection to ourselves, others, and the ineffable world of spirit, are themes addressed in this article through the character Carrie Mathieson (Claire Danes), a CIA operative in the Showtime series Homeland. Carrie, who suffers from a bipolar disorder, has the gift of uncanny knowing. She is a “shamanic-like” figure who is able to allow for the disintegration of ego boundaries in the service of a higher aim. The author explores the price of maintaining a protective cloak of “normality” and contends that Carrie’s sacred wound takes her behind her defensive structure, opening her to deep truths and transformative love, while also cracking open her psyche into what the physicist David Bohm describes as the Implicate Order—a fundamental order of reality where space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationship between elements. Also drawing on a personal experience of living in the Eastern Block and a series of dreams of going behind the Iron Curtain, the author explores the disruption to the old personality that occurs when moving beyond barriers or defenses. She asks, “Does living on the ‘frontier of your identity’ mean disassembling the personality as we know it?”

Immersion in altered experience: An investigation of the relationship between absorption and psychopathology.

Understanding alterations in perceptual experiences as a component of the basic symptom structure of psychosis may improve early detection and the identification of subtle shifts that can precede symptom onset or exacerbation. We explored the phenomenological construct of absorption and psychotic experiences in both clinical (bipolar psychosis and schizophrenia spectrum) and non-clinical participants. Participants with psychosis endorsed significantly higher absorption compared to the non-clinical group. Absorption was positively correlated with all types of hallucinations and multiple types of delusions. The analysis yielded two distinct cluster groups that demarcated a distinction along the continuum of self-disturbance: on characterized by attenuated ego boundaries and the other stable ego boundaries. The study suggests that absorption is a potentially important but under-researched component of psychosis that overlaps with, but is not identical to the more heavily theorized constructs of aberrant salience and hyperreflexivity.

New developments in neuroscience can benefit the learning and performance of music

ABSTRACTAs advancements in neuroscience increasingly illuminate the traditional understanding of the human mind, many of the new insights are also of relevance to musicians as well as to music pedagogy. Especially the greater understanding of how intersubjective processes are integral to the development of the right brain has shown how, according to the neuropsychoanalyst Allan Schore, right-brain models can bridge the fields of psychiatry, music and trauma. Following a short introduction, the article discusses the development of ego boundaries and their relevance to young aspiring musicians as well as the close relation to self-esteem. This is followed by a short explanation of the psychodynamic processes underlying interpersonal interaction and relation. Right-brain function in development and trauma is discussed and its links to music are highlighted; the issue of fear and learned helplessness in musicians is also considered briefly. A discussion on the impact of fear on musicians’ memory follows. The paper concludes by showing that, while brain pathology can be associated with creativity, creative processes in and of themselves are not pathological. Throughout, special reference is made to aspects that have particular relevance to previously disadvantaged music learners.

Ego boundaries and self-esteem: Two elusive facets of the psyche of performing musicians

This article presents a heuristic inquiry into ego boundary development and functioning in aspiring musicians. In their role as communicators in society, challenging and stretching existing boundaries form an integral aspect of the work of artists. This has an impact on ego boundary functioning. The relevance of both aspiring musicians and their mentors understanding psychodynamic processes at work in musical relations is explained, and implications of technological advancements briefly highlighted. The article shows how Alice Miller’s definition of self-esteem – as being based on the authenticity of one’s own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities – is narrowly related to ego boundary functioning. The processes involved in ego boundary formation, the development of self and the development of musical identity are shown to be closely related, also neurologically, and a mutual interrelationship between self-esteem, identity and the effectiveness of musical communication was discovered. Writers who portray ego boundary thickness as existing along a continuum are referred to, and possible implications for pathology in musicians are briefly highlighted. The article illustrates that great pedagogues have an intuitive grasp of the importance of these concepts; it makes suggestions for future research and highlights the need for developing a measuring instrument.