“Patients may be bringing in harmonies that are tough to connect -fragments of life or things that cannot be integrated. Part of the improvisation in a way is to make sense, to create a new improvisation that ties together different affects or maybe clusters of chords that feel to be unpleasant. Can we work with them musically to make sense of them at least? Maybe represent them not always in a pleasing way but through our improvisation, be able to create a new motif that now can be examined in different ways.”
Rafael Ornstein, MD
Brookline, Massachusetts
Episode Description:
We begin by recognizing the well-known analytic challenge which is to learn the basic scales and then learn to improvise – both being essential tools for creating a dependable and creative analytic space. Rafael shares with us his early familial psychoanalytic influences and his search to find his own voice. We discuss the similarities between analytic free association and musical improvisation. He demonstrates his clinical observations with three live musical renditions – first the melody and then two riffs off it with increasingly loose connections to the original theme. We discuss how this is similar to the deepening of an analytic process allowing for greater freedom of imagination and self-awareness. We consider the musical versions of countertransference as well as the termination capacity for improvised self-reflection.
Our Guest:
Rafael Ornstein, MD is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in Brookline Massachusetts. He is a graduate of and on the faculty at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and he supervises psychiatry residents at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Medical School continuing education course on psychodynamic psychotherapy. He enjoys playing piano in the sextet, Bluedog Jazz, a band with monthly gigs in local restaurants and clubs and is on Spotify
Recommended Readings and Listening:
Alev, Simeon, (2021), Jazz and Psychotherapy: Perspectives on the Complexity of Improvisation. Routledge.
Knoblach, Steven, (2000), The Musical Edge of the Therapeutic Dialogue. Routledge.
Lichtenstein, David, (1993), “The Rhetoric of Improvisation: Spontaneous Discourse in Jazz and Psychotherapy.” American Imago. 50:227-252
Markman, Henry, (2020), “Accompaniment in Jazz and Psychoanalysis”, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 30 (4), 432-447
Dennyzeitlin.com. Denny Zeitlin, MD is a psychiatrist and a significant figure in Jazz, in both performance and composition. His website has a wealth of information on jazz and its intersections with psychology.
Selected Recordings
Oscar Peterson’s Blues Etude – https://youtu.be/yTsvAvLZetw
Lulu’s Back In town: Comparing Fats Waller and Thelonious Monk.
Fats improvising on the structure. Monk stretching the structure
Fats: https://youtu.be/7rgtt_8DbKE
Monk: https://youtu.be/9QAYpuTLhVk
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme – Improvisation and the Spiritual – https://youtu.be/O6pSffe4k60
Bill Evans – Alone
Solo album, Evans creates very strong emotion and a sense of introspection in his approach.
https://youtu.be/UyL3x8lOJfM
Elaine Elias – Chega De Saudade
Elaine sings it straight and then stretches out with an amazing piano solo, with striking group interactions, coming back to the melody.
https://youtu.be/Ec5rMkp9XbE
Blue Dog Jazz on Spotify – Rafael Ornstein piano, tracks 1,2,5,6 and 8.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3hQ1IygfwUNfzUCmCxGcpH?si=UA32G7_xSWCWiJMhtTBz8A
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