According to Freud, anxiety is experienced at the earliest possible stage of life: ‘the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety’ (Freud, 1997, p.400n). Birth is the first and strongest experience of separation. In growing up, the infant will have many other such experiences on the way to becoming a more independent being. Especially in early life, these separations are a matter of life or death. The baby is too young to know that mother will return to give sustenance, only that she is not there now, and therefore the baby may not survive. This feeling, anxiety, is thus a long way from the current conception of merely a ‘feeling of worry’ (OED) – this is serious. All other anxiety, according to Freud, is derived from this. The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1988), conceived that our entire personality is formed by our particular methods for avoiding anxiety. In this way anxiety is hardly a disorder, but a necessary part of being human and the basis for individuality.
Freud distinguishes between primary anxiety - the life-or-death struggles mentioned above, which are caused by genuine perceived danger - and secondary, or ‘signal’ anxiety (Freud, 1959). The latter is a type of warning that there may be a repetition of the primary anxiety and exists so that action can be taken to avoid the threat. We could conceive of Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) as a type of signal anxiety. There is no actual danger to life in performing a concert, but the experience of it may be a reminder of separation or helplessness in infancy.
It is therefore not a puzzle that the symptoms of MPA are so varied, since they are connected to the individual’s complexity, their history, situation and psychology. Most MPA research asks the question “how can we treat this condition?” but it may be more productive to ask, “what do these symptoms mean?”.
In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Freud describes the signal (secondary) anxiety thus:
‘…the ego subjects itself to anxiety as a sort of inoculation, submitting to a slight attack of the illness in order to escape its full strength’ (Freud, 1959, p.162).
Freud thus saw secondary anxiety symptoms as containing meaning. This meaning is hidden, but in a particular way, as a small dose of the primary anxiety. Freud also points to the common source of symptoms and dreams.
'In both cases we find a struggle between two trends, of which one is unconscious and ordinarily repressed and strives towards satisfaction – that is, wish fulfilment – while the other, belonging probably to the conscious ego, is disapproving and repressive. The outcome of this conflict is a compromise formation (the dream or the symptom) in which both trends have found an incomplete expression.' (Freud, 1923, p.242) (Freud’s italics and brackets).
Looked at this way, a classical music recital might almost be designed to produce anxiety. A passion for music that demands expression, coupled with the formal behavioural demands and the expectation of ‘correctness’ from teachers or parents – there would be no escape! Even those musicians who are dutiful rather than passionate must match their wish for approval to the expectations of those they seek to impress, thereby setting up the conditions for possible symptom formation.
Bearing in mind the meaning contained in secondary anxiety it is not unreasonable to describe music performance anxiety symptoms as ‘the incomplete expression of a wish or need of which one consciously disapproves’ (Kenny, 2011, p.170). This is also connected to Freud’s conception of parapraxis, most famous for the spoken ‘Freudian slip’, where a supposed mistake reveals a hidden intention. But Freud included in parapraxis not just speech but ‘forgetting…misreadings, losses and mislayings of objects, certain errors, instances of apparent self-injury… habitual movements carried out seemingly without intention or in play, tunes hummed "thoughtlessly", and so on’ (Freud, 1923, p.240). His research shows, he writes, that these unintended events are not random but 'strictly determined' and are 'an expression of the subject's suppressed intentions' (p.240). Unintended gross movements, behaviours and thoughts might serve also as a description of some MPA symptoms. Could MPA be a form of parapraxis, revealing hidden intentions of the performer?
To summarise, signal anxiety shows that symptoms may be caused by, and express, incomplete desire; parapraxis that they may be caused by, and reveal, hidden intentions.
Freud distinguishes between primary anxiety - the life-or-death struggles mentioned above, which are caused by genuine perceived danger - and secondary, or ‘signal’ anxiety (Freud, 1959). The latter is a type of warning that there may be a repetition of the primary anxiety and exists so that action can be taken to avoid the threat. We could conceive of Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) as a type of signal anxiety. There is no actual danger to life in performing a concert, but the experience of it may be a reminder of separation or helplessness in infancy.
It is therefore not a puzzle that the symptoms of MPA are so varied, since they are connected to the individual’s complexity, their history, situation and psychology. Most MPA research asks the question “how can we treat this condition?” but it may be more productive to ask, “what do these symptoms mean?”.
In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Freud describes the signal (secondary) anxiety thus:
‘…the ego subjects itself to anxiety as a sort of inoculation, submitting to a slight attack of the illness in order to escape its full strength’ (Freud, 1959, p.162).
Freud thus saw secondary anxiety symptoms as containing meaning. This meaning is hidden, but in a particular way, as a small dose of the primary anxiety. Freud also points to the common source of symptoms and dreams.
'In both cases we find a struggle between two trends, of which one is unconscious and ordinarily repressed and strives towards satisfaction – that is, wish fulfilment – while the other, belonging probably to the conscious ego, is disapproving and repressive. The outcome of this conflict is a compromise formation (the dream or the symptom) in which both trends have found an incomplete expression.' (Freud, 1923, p.242) (Freud’s italics and brackets).
Looked at this way, a classical music recital might almost be designed to produce anxiety. A passion for music that demands expression, coupled with the formal behavioural demands and the expectation of ‘correctness’ from teachers or parents – there would be no escape! Even those musicians who are dutiful rather than passionate must match their wish for approval to the expectations of those they seek to impress, thereby setting up the conditions for possible symptom formation.
Bearing in mind the meaning contained in secondary anxiety it is not unreasonable to describe music performance anxiety symptoms as ‘the incomplete expression of a wish or need of which one consciously disapproves’ (Kenny, 2011, p.170). This is also connected to Freud’s conception of parapraxis, most famous for the spoken ‘Freudian slip’, where a supposed mistake reveals a hidden intention. But Freud included in parapraxis not just speech but ‘forgetting…misreadings, losses and mislayings of objects, certain errors, instances of apparent self-injury… habitual movements carried out seemingly without intention or in play, tunes hummed "thoughtlessly", and so on’ (Freud, 1923, p.240). His research shows, he writes, that these unintended events are not random but 'strictly determined' and are 'an expression of the subject's suppressed intentions' (p.240). Unintended gross movements, behaviours and thoughts might serve also as a description of some MPA symptoms. Could MPA be a form of parapraxis, revealing hidden intentions of the performer?
To summarise, signal anxiety shows that symptoms may be caused by, and express, incomplete desire; parapraxis that they may be caused by, and reveal, hidden intentions.
