ABSTRACT
This discussion contemplates theoretical incantation as a convergence of auto-theory and music. The relevance of this mode of expression to the history and future of psychoanalytic writing is reviewed and extended. A comparison to the form that psychotherapy-informed auto-theory has emerged in pop and hip-hop music in recent years is presented. These various considerations are reconciled with the psychoanalytic project of negotiating freedom.
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Notes on contributors
Adam Blum
Adam Blum, Psy.D. is co-author of Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 2023) with Peter Goldberg and Michael Levin. He has written and presented on psychoanalysis and the music of Björk, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Stephen Sondheim, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson. He is in private practice in San Francisco.