S u m m a r y

 

Lehtonen K (2001)

Is the black sun shining over institutions of music teaching ?

Psykologia 36: 306-315. Vammala ISSN 0355-1067

 

The article is based on a study of projective stories (n=50) written by university students. The research was based on a grounded theory design which meant that stories were collected first and the theoretical part then formulated according to the strories. The study is part of a larger project about music education, which is trying to shed new light on the success stories and hero myths related to musicians and musical training.

Most of the stories told about the sadness, loneliness and anxiety belonging to musical training. They seemed to say that studying music is based on the principle "Only the fittiest will survive". Theoretically these stories told about losing music as a pleasure giving transitional object (Winnicott 1966, 1971). This process seemed to cause a traumatic intrapsychic struggle filled with anger, shame and quilt among the students.

Most of the stories were obviously based on the students' own experiences (most of the students had musical training) and they seemed to suggest that the black sun (taken from the book by Julia Kristeva) is shining over institutional music education, which means that there is a lot of melancholy, grief and suffering built in the learning process of music.

 

Key words:

Music education, object relationships, hero myth, and music culture as a collective superego, projective stories, loneliness and shame, guilt and anxiety belonging to the music learning-instruction process.

 

Kimmo Lehtonen, Ph.D, Professor, Department of Education, University of Turku, Lemminkäisenkatu 1, FIN 20520 Turku, Finland.