Music and the Mind

Why does music have such a powerful effect on our minds and bodies? It is the most mysterious and most intangible of all forms of art. Yet, Anthony Storr believes, music today 1s a deeply significant experience for a greater number of people than ever before. In this challenging book, he explores why this should be so. Music is a succession of tones through time. How can a sequence of sounds both express emotion and evoke it in the listener? Drawing on a wide variety of opinions, Storr argues that the patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving both structure and coherence to our feelings and emotions. Dr Storr was a practising psychiatrist for nearly forty years and is a distinguished thinker about the sources of creativity. He is deeply concerned with the psychology of the creative process, and with the healing power of the arts. Here he explains how, 1n a culture which requires us in our daily working lives to separate rational thought from feelings, music reunites mind and body, restoring our sense of personal wholeness. It is because music possesses this capacity that many people, including the author, find it so life-enhancing that it justifies existence. Dr Storr’s investigation of music is also an exploration of the human psyche. That is why this book, like all his work, deepens our understanding of ourselves and the lives we lead. Born in 1920, ANTHONY STORR was educated at Winchester, at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and at Westminster Hospital. He qualified as a doctor in 1944, and subsequently specialized in psychiatry. His publications include The Integrity of the Personality (1960), Human Destructiveness (1972), Jung (1973), The Dynamics of Creation (1972), The Art of Psychotherapy (1979), Solitude (1989), Freud (1989), and Churchill’s Black Dog (1989). He has contributed reviews and articles to many papers, including the Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Independent. Dr Storr is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is also Honorary Consulting Psychiatrist to the Oxfordshire Health Authority, and an Emeritus Fellow of Green College, Oxford.