Another definition of anxiety that might be fruitful for Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) comes originally from the philosopher Kierkegaard. He understood anxiety as the feeling of not having a fixed sense of self. We are completely free beings, but the constant freedom of choice, and the fact that these choices really matter, gives us anxiety. ‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’ (Kierkegaard, 1980, p.61). Humans really are free, but the necessary accompaniment to this is relating to the world and ourselves through anxiety.
Once again, this is not a ‘disorder’, but part of being human. One could exist, and people try, by clinging to a fixed sense of self, but this, in the terms of the existentialist Heidegger, would be ‘inauthentic’. There is an infinite number of possible future selves, and if we are open to them, this is ‘authentic’, but anxiety-provoking. If we try to live an ‘inauthentic’ life in order to avoid anxiety, this is impossible to sustain, as anxiety will appear eventually. This ‘inauthentic’ life also restricts the person’s potential because it is an avoidance of becoming a different person in the future (Spinelli, 1989).
Not knowing who we ‘really’ are may be a familiar feeling to some readers. But for Heidegger, this feeling (anxiety, or ‘angst’) is both inevitable and productive: inevitable because there are an infinite number of future ‘selves’ so there is no true fixed self; and productive because this angst is a spur to change. If we cling to our current self, there will be no development of our potential, and anyway, in this case angst will make its presence felt as a feeling that this static self is not quite right (Spinelli, 1989).
Yaroslav Senyshyn (1999) has explained this in terms of anxiety having two aspects, negative and positive. The negative is more familiar, and the only side that is focused on in performance anxiety research. The negative happens when a person tries to cling to the fixed view of themselves and is then suddenly put in a situation where this is not possible. This is very familiar to musicians with MPA. They practise, but then the concert is different - they have to be different. They can't be the same person they were in practice because the situation has changed radically. Their previous self, the one in the practice room, who they are trying to hang on to, effectively has to die. This is truly anxiety-provoking. It is a matter of life or death, as in Freud’s conception. It is not just about getting it wrong in the concert but a serious doubt about who we are, about our existence[1]. No wonder MPA is so strong.
The positive side of anxiety is also a feeling of not having a fixed sense of self. But the difference is in accepting this: not clinging to a fixed self but allowing fluidity in who we are. If we are open to this, we could become any one of many different types of people in the future. Another way of putting this is that we are free. It might feel uncomfortable, like you are walking on shifting sand, but you have, in the lovely phrase of Kierkegaard (1980), the ‘possibility of possibility’ (p.42). Anxiety sets us free. It is ‘the dizziness of freedom’.
Senyshyn and O’Neill in Subjective Experience of Anxiety and Musical Performance : A Relational Perspective (2001) suggest that performance anxiety may be an opportunity for a new emergent self and that this could be welcomed instead of feared.
During the actual performance, there is great tension arising from the conflict that surrounds the performer’s resistance to the emergent ‘concert’ self in favour of the erroneous ‘fixed’ self which no longer exists, as such, in the immediacy of the performing moment. By avoiding/resisting the ‘flow’ of this possible metamorphosis, turmoil, fear, panic, and ultimately an indefinable anxiety…in its most negative manifestations takes control of the situation. The positive opportunity for anxiety is diminished, lost, or squandered in this suppression, repression or ‘fear’ of that possible emergent self. Thus the ‘emergent’ self must be ‘welcomed’ (p.52-53).
This is an idea that may appeal to concert-goers. After all, who wants to listen to a re-enactment of an already redundant fixed self, the one who diligently gets it right in the practice room? The performances we remember may be those that have a sense of creation in the moment, not re-creation in a fixed way.
Senyshyn and O’Neill stop short of allowing the anxiety symptoms themselves to suggest what ‘self’ is emerging. Instead they recommend that the performer should ‘actively imagine a successful (artistically speaking), competent, creative self’ and ‘actively encourage (it)’ (p.50). However, it can be argued that consciously choosing a particular future self in this way is an inauthentic way of behaving. Spinelli is quoted, paraphrasing Heidegger: ‘our inauthentic stance leads us to view the self as possessing fixed characteristics which must be applied for the purposes of achieving success’ (p.50). And the authors comment that a ‘fragmented self with fixed characteristics…is an inauthentic self incapable of actualizing its potential for another authentic self’ (p.50). Is not ‘actively encouraging’ a ‘competent, creative self’ creating exactly this? Instead one could see what self is emerging from our anxiety by going to the anxiety symptoms themselves. This is to paraphrase the phenomenologist and proto-existentialist Edmund Husserl: ‘We must go back to the "things themselves” ’ (Husserl, 2001, p.168).
There seems to be much in performance anxiety that is related to attempting to maintain a sense of self. May (1977) says ‘anxiety is the apprehension cued…by a threat to some value that the individual holds essential to his existence as a personality’ (p.180), and we have seen that musicians view a disparity between the identity of themselves as performer and ‘their’ MPA. If there was no sense of fixed personality, as Heidegger suggests, there would be no anxiety. Acceptance of new selves may be the key. This may be particularly difficult for the performer who has endured parental criticism and ‘hot-housing’ when young and never develops enough confidence in ‘themselves’ to abandon their ‘selves’ to the possibility of new selves in performance. It is also connected to the issue of perfectionism, where a perfect self, a perfect performance, is thought to be attainable.
This flexibility of what it means to be oneself is recommended by some writers: ‘People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them’ (Emerson, n.d.); ‘True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are’ (Winterson, 2013)
Much MPA research refers to the idea that ‘fight or flight’ anxiety is necessary in nature but is inappropriate in a situation like a musical performance. We are having a reaction as if we are being attacked by a sabre-toothed tiger, whereas all we have to do is perform a Beethoven sonata, and that this is why it is such a big problem. Barlow’s model of anxiety (Barlow, 2002), refers to these inappropriate triggers as ‘false alarms’. But in Heidegger’s terms, the new possible selves that emerge in performance are a genuine threat to a fixed self. What could be false about a genuine threat to one's 'self’?
I have argued that the control that MPA has over what Senyshyn and O’Neill (2001) refers to as the ‘core’ self (p.45) is the main experience of performance anxiety for musicians. Most researchers effectively attempt to remedy this by regaining control for the core self. Senyshyn and O’Neill rather point to the idea that is unhelpful to think of their being a core self at all, and that belief in one might be the origin of the problematic nature of MPA. However, even they advocate actively imagining an alternative ‘competent, creative self’ (p.50), thereby putting the core self in charge of this choosing. Likewise, Brooks (2014) suggests reappraising anxiety as excitement, but it is still the central ‘I’ that does this reappraisal. Might it instead be possible to balance more the ‘battle with myself’ cited in Kirchner (2003) so that there need not be a winner in the form of the ‘core self’? Similarly, the research that recommends changing habits negatively correlated to MPA also puts a central self in charge in attempting to rectify certain character traits. Is this possible or desirable, bearing in mind Senyshyn and O’Neill’s objections that the clinging to the central self is a fundamental cause of MPA?
In summary, existentialist ideas about anxiety do seem to connect the cause of MPA (existential angst) with its symptoms (which express a new emergent self). This has not been explored in MPA research, with the exception of Senyshyn and O’Neill’s paper, which welcomed MPA as the sign of an emerging new artistic self. MPA is seen as threatening only when the musician tries to hold on to their current sense of self, rather than allowing the anxiety to reveal an emerging new self in performance. This echoes the psychoanalytical view that anxiety expresses hidden desires, and provides welcome triangulation for using this idea for MPA.
[1] See Kirchner (2003), who demonstrates the structure of MPA as one that threatens the identity of the musician.
Once again, this is not a ‘disorder’, but part of being human. One could exist, and people try, by clinging to a fixed sense of self, but this, in the terms of the existentialist Heidegger, would be ‘inauthentic’. There is an infinite number of possible future selves, and if we are open to them, this is ‘authentic’, but anxiety-provoking. If we try to live an ‘inauthentic’ life in order to avoid anxiety, this is impossible to sustain, as anxiety will appear eventually. This ‘inauthentic’ life also restricts the person’s potential because it is an avoidance of becoming a different person in the future (Spinelli, 1989).
Not knowing who we ‘really’ are may be a familiar feeling to some readers. But for Heidegger, this feeling (anxiety, or ‘angst’) is both inevitable and productive: inevitable because there are an infinite number of future ‘selves’ so there is no true fixed self; and productive because this angst is a spur to change. If we cling to our current self, there will be no development of our potential, and anyway, in this case angst will make its presence felt as a feeling that this static self is not quite right (Spinelli, 1989).
Yaroslav Senyshyn (1999) has explained this in terms of anxiety having two aspects, negative and positive. The negative is more familiar, and the only side that is focused on in performance anxiety research. The negative happens when a person tries to cling to the fixed view of themselves and is then suddenly put in a situation where this is not possible. This is very familiar to musicians with MPA. They practise, but then the concert is different - they have to be different. They can't be the same person they were in practice because the situation has changed radically. Their previous self, the one in the practice room, who they are trying to hang on to, effectively has to die. This is truly anxiety-provoking. It is a matter of life or death, as in Freud’s conception. It is not just about getting it wrong in the concert but a serious doubt about who we are, about our existence[1]. No wonder MPA is so strong.
The positive side of anxiety is also a feeling of not having a fixed sense of self. But the difference is in accepting this: not clinging to a fixed self but allowing fluidity in who we are. If we are open to this, we could become any one of many different types of people in the future. Another way of putting this is that we are free. It might feel uncomfortable, like you are walking on shifting sand, but you have, in the lovely phrase of Kierkegaard (1980), the ‘possibility of possibility’ (p.42). Anxiety sets us free. It is ‘the dizziness of freedom’.
Senyshyn and O’Neill in Subjective Experience of Anxiety and Musical Performance : A Relational Perspective (2001) suggest that performance anxiety may be an opportunity for a new emergent self and that this could be welcomed instead of feared.
During the actual performance, there is great tension arising from the conflict that surrounds the performer’s resistance to the emergent ‘concert’ self in favour of the erroneous ‘fixed’ self which no longer exists, as such, in the immediacy of the performing moment. By avoiding/resisting the ‘flow’ of this possible metamorphosis, turmoil, fear, panic, and ultimately an indefinable anxiety…in its most negative manifestations takes control of the situation. The positive opportunity for anxiety is diminished, lost, or squandered in this suppression, repression or ‘fear’ of that possible emergent self. Thus the ‘emergent’ self must be ‘welcomed’ (p.52-53).
This is an idea that may appeal to concert-goers. After all, who wants to listen to a re-enactment of an already redundant fixed self, the one who diligently gets it right in the practice room? The performances we remember may be those that have a sense of creation in the moment, not re-creation in a fixed way.
Senyshyn and O’Neill stop short of allowing the anxiety symptoms themselves to suggest what ‘self’ is emerging. Instead they recommend that the performer should ‘actively imagine a successful (artistically speaking), competent, creative self’ and ‘actively encourage (it)’ (p.50). However, it can be argued that consciously choosing a particular future self in this way is an inauthentic way of behaving. Spinelli is quoted, paraphrasing Heidegger: ‘our inauthentic stance leads us to view the self as possessing fixed characteristics which must be applied for the purposes of achieving success’ (p.50). And the authors comment that a ‘fragmented self with fixed characteristics…is an inauthentic self incapable of actualizing its potential for another authentic self’ (p.50). Is not ‘actively encouraging’ a ‘competent, creative self’ creating exactly this? Instead one could see what self is emerging from our anxiety by going to the anxiety symptoms themselves. This is to paraphrase the phenomenologist and proto-existentialist Edmund Husserl: ‘We must go back to the "things themselves” ’ (Husserl, 2001, p.168).
There seems to be much in performance anxiety that is related to attempting to maintain a sense of self. May (1977) says ‘anxiety is the apprehension cued…by a threat to some value that the individual holds essential to his existence as a personality’ (p.180), and we have seen that musicians view a disparity between the identity of themselves as performer and ‘their’ MPA. If there was no sense of fixed personality, as Heidegger suggests, there would be no anxiety. Acceptance of new selves may be the key. This may be particularly difficult for the performer who has endured parental criticism and ‘hot-housing’ when young and never develops enough confidence in ‘themselves’ to abandon their ‘selves’ to the possibility of new selves in performance. It is also connected to the issue of perfectionism, where a perfect self, a perfect performance, is thought to be attainable.
This flexibility of what it means to be oneself is recommended by some writers: ‘People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them’ (Emerson, n.d.); ‘True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are’ (Winterson, 2013)
Much MPA research refers to the idea that ‘fight or flight’ anxiety is necessary in nature but is inappropriate in a situation like a musical performance. We are having a reaction as if we are being attacked by a sabre-toothed tiger, whereas all we have to do is perform a Beethoven sonata, and that this is why it is such a big problem. Barlow’s model of anxiety (Barlow, 2002), refers to these inappropriate triggers as ‘false alarms’. But in Heidegger’s terms, the new possible selves that emerge in performance are a genuine threat to a fixed self. What could be false about a genuine threat to one's 'self’?
I have argued that the control that MPA has over what Senyshyn and O’Neill (2001) refers to as the ‘core’ self (p.45) is the main experience of performance anxiety for musicians. Most researchers effectively attempt to remedy this by regaining control for the core self. Senyshyn and O’Neill rather point to the idea that is unhelpful to think of their being a core self at all, and that belief in one might be the origin of the problematic nature of MPA. However, even they advocate actively imagining an alternative ‘competent, creative self’ (p.50), thereby putting the core self in charge of this choosing. Likewise, Brooks (2014) suggests reappraising anxiety as excitement, but it is still the central ‘I’ that does this reappraisal. Might it instead be possible to balance more the ‘battle with myself’ cited in Kirchner (2003) so that there need not be a winner in the form of the ‘core self’? Similarly, the research that recommends changing habits negatively correlated to MPA also puts a central self in charge in attempting to rectify certain character traits. Is this possible or desirable, bearing in mind Senyshyn and O’Neill’s objections that the clinging to the central self is a fundamental cause of MPA?
In summary, existentialist ideas about anxiety do seem to connect the cause of MPA (existential angst) with its symptoms (which express a new emergent self). This has not been explored in MPA research, with the exception of Senyshyn and O’Neill’s paper, which welcomed MPA as the sign of an emerging new artistic self. MPA is seen as threatening only when the musician tries to hold on to their current sense of self, rather than allowing the anxiety to reveal an emerging new self in performance. This echoes the psychoanalytical view that anxiety expresses hidden desires, and provides welcome triangulation for using this idea for MPA.
[1] See Kirchner (2003), who demonstrates the structure of MPA as one that threatens the identity of the musician.
