“Living Turned Inside Out”: the Musical Expression of Psychotic and Schizoid Experience in Talking Heads’ Remain in Light

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 62, No. 2, June 2002 ( 2002) “LIVING TURNED INSIDE OUT”: THE MUSICAL EXPRESSION OF PSYCHOTIC AND SCHIZOID EXPERIENCE IN TALKING HEADS’ REMAIN IN LIGHT Michael A. Brog The rock album form, advantageously suited for the artistic expression of intrapsychic experience, has been virtually ignored by analytic writers. Remain in Light by Talking Heads is presented as an example of an album that effectively utilizes the potentialities of this form to give powerful and disconcerting musical expression to a variety of psychotic and schizoid experiences, bringing to life the formulations for these phenomena of Bion, Winnicott, Gun- trip, Ogden, Grotstein and others. The album suggests a variety of mechanisms by which sound and music may serve both defensive and compensatory functions in relation to these phenomena. KEY WORDS: psychoanalysis; music; schizoid; psychosis; Bion. Psychoanalysts have often turned away from the data of their consulting rooms to make a variety of creative works, from drama to literature and art, the subject of their inquiry. These efforts have often met with intriguing results that have been used to exemplify various psychoanalytic theories, while also enriching our understanding of the creative work being ana- lyzed. Relatively underrepresented as the focus of these efforts has been the world of music, and, in particular, the genre of modern rock music has remained largely uninvestigated. The reasons for this absence of serious psychoanalytic inquiry into the world of rock music are varied. The works in this genre are largely created by young adults for consumption by young adults and adolescents, thereby lessening their appeal to most analysts. Firmly in the arena of popular cul- ture, rock music has suffered from a commercialism that has often dimin- ished the quality of its most readily available product, which is frequently found to have little redeeming value even by the form’s own critics. Often these works are overly loud, distastefully direct in their expression of ag- gression and sexuality, simplistic in their romantic sentiment, and uninter- Michael A. Brog, M.D., is on Faculty, St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, St. Louis University School of Medicine. Address correspondence to Michael Brog, M.D., 225 South Meramec, Suite 932T, St. Louis, MO 63105. 163 0002-9548/02/0600-0163/1 2002 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis 164 BROG esting in their musical composition. Consequently, psychoanalysts have not paid much attention. Despite these limitations, there are compelling reasons to analyze rock music. As a form for the expression of inner human experience, it has many advantageous features. Equally important, there have been many gifted cre- ators who have fully utilized these features to give voice to their complex creative expressions. The richness and vividness of these works creates an evocative and affectively charged listening experience, one that invites applied psychoanalytic investigation. In this paper, Remain in Light by Talking Heads will be presented as an example of an album that effectively utilizes the potentialities of the rock album form to give powerful and disconcerting musical expression to a variety of psychotic and schizoid experiences, bringing to life the formulations for these phenomena of Bion, Winnicott, Ogden, Guntrip, Grotstein, and others. The album will be shown to suggest a variety of mechanisms by which sound and music may serve both defensive and compensatory functions in relation to these phenomena. ROCK ALBUM AS VEHICLE FOR REPRESENTING INTRAPSYCHIC EXPERIENCE The rock album format can be seen to possess, in multiple regards, advantageous potential for expressing the depth, intensity and complexity of intrapsychic experience. Music has been well recognized as having the power to instill rich, preverbal feeling states in the listener, as several psychoanalytic writers on music have emphasized (Kohut, 1957/1989; Nass, 1975/1989a; Noy, 1968/1989, 1993; Reik, 1953). As Reik (1953) has ob- served, “music can convey the infinite variety of primitive and subtle emotions” (p. 9), “music is the universal language of human emotion, the expression of the inexpressible” (p. 8). Kohut noted that music’s capacity to tap into powerful archaic emotional experiences derives from its facilitating “subtle regression via extra verbal modes of psychic function” (p. 38). These affects may be shared in a way that invites the listener to feel with the artist, or they may be more forcibly thrust upon the listener, communications which in some contexts can be considered to function as a projective iden- tification (John Lennon’s “Revolution 9” for example; Brog, 1995). Music can express a wide range of emotions and employ qualitatively different modalities with which to communicate them. Additionally, music in its composition and arrangement can take the form of a variety of intrapsychic and external experiences. For example, a peaceful melody may repeatedly intrude into and cover over an underlying disturbing rhythm, thereby conveying defensive suppression. A pleasing melody can fail to fully develop through being dampened down and inter- rupted by other musical elements, suggesting an experience of inhibition. “LIVING TURNED INSIDE OUT” 165 Kohut suggested that musical tune and rhythm might often represent inter- acting secondary and primary processes (1957/1989, p. 27). As for external actions, even the subtleties inherent in the flight of a fly can be communi- cated musically (Treitler, 1993). An endless variety of expressions relating drive, defense, affect, and action can be embodied in the composition and arrangement of a song. Along with these well-recognized properties of music, the addition of lyrics and an album format adds further communicative potentialities. Rock music can be seen to be in an advantageous position, compared to both nonlyricized music and nonmelodicized writing, in its potential for expressing ideation connected to emotion. This occurs through a double enhance- ment of the lyrical line, first by the manner in which it is sung, and second through the instrumentation, musical line, and musical interludes with which it is connected. Even the most ordinary of statements takes on force- ful presence when resonating with musically conveyed feelings. Music, as powerful conveyor of emotion, serves to amplify, clarify, or even contradict the emotional elements suggested in the accompanying lyrical narrative. Artists attuned to the creative possibilities inherent in the intertwining of words and music can use this form as a vehicle for producing expressions of inner experience, the depths and complexity of which can transcend what the music or words could individually convey. We can appreciate the artistic challenge encompassed in this intertwining, as it requires the artist’s simultaneous utilization of verbal and preverbal modes of communication. It is also important to consider the associative possibilities that naturally derive from the nature of the rock album’s essential composition, that it is a collection of approximately twelve separate elements or songs. This arrangement may imply an inchoate storyline as in the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Other potential associative elements that constitute important parts of the album include its title, the cover (which contains a piece of art in the form of a photograph or illustration), and even the contents of the package, which often include a written copy of lyrics along with additional artwork. This format, in distinction from other forms of lyricized music, such as opera, or show tunes, is not re- stricted to serving purposes of dialogue and storytelling and in this has the advantage of being far more “free associative.” This enhances the possibility of there being meaningful associative links both inside and between the separate songs. Each song can be considered as its own separate entity and as part of a larger whole that provides enhancing contextual meanings to the other songs on the album. Overarching themes, with important varia- tions, may be conveyed in the collection of songs. Links between drive, defense, and fantasy, and between self and object representations can be- come clarified in the process of examining the sequence and patterns of 166 BROG expression contained on the album. As with our usual clinical analytic ma- terial, in an effective rock album we would expect the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. While we might expect that the most moving, evocative, and analytically engaging albums would be those where we find an artist with the inclina- tion and creative ability to convey the depth and complexity of his or her intrapsychic life, it is inevitably hazardous to infer about the inner experiences of the artist from them. As Nuetzel (2000) points out, applied psychoanalytic approaches to interpreting art are problematic due to the lack of feedback available from the “analysand.” Interpreting the relationship between a creative work and the mind of the artist adds further speculation to the mix. The primary focus of this paper will be the analysis of an album as an autonomous work of art, exploring what psychoanalytic theory can contribute to the understanding of what this work represents and expresses. REMAIN IN LIGHT BY TALKING HEADS Released in 1980, Remain in Light was the fourth album produced by the unconventional New York band known as Talking Heads. Consisting of former art students David Byrne (singer/lyricist/guitarist), Tina Weymouth (bass), Jerry Harrison (guitar/keyboards), and Chris Frantz (drums), the band first emerged out of the New York rock scene in the mid-1970s. Remain in Light contains eight songs that possess a striking free-associative feel, and there is little coherent thought process that can be followed for very long in the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Producer Brian Eno was highly influential in the achievement of this effect through the implementa- tion of his personalized production style (Gans, 1985).

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