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Conficius(552-479 BC) stated the functions of music as the means of emotional catharsis, overcoming conflicts, and promotion human communications and morality, while the modem psychoanalytic theorists are able to isolate three functions of music such as emotional catharsis for repressed wishes, playful mastery of the threats of trauma, and enjoyable submission to rules. The meaning of music for the developed, structuralized psyche can be derived by focusing successively on the three parts of the structure : id, ego, and superego. The pioneer in the field of psychoanalytic explorations in music was Max Graf(1873-1958), father of ’Little Hans’, who regarded the main functions of music as to enhance the listener by bringing about a feeling of connectedness with God or other people, and to provide a way of access to unconscious process. Following Freud’s topographic theory Graf mentioned three stages of composing process the preliminary work done by the unconscious, the combined work of unconscious and conscious mental powers, and the conscious final polishing of the form. He found evidence for the first phase of composing work by examining composer’s use of unconscious drives, psychic complexes, early childhood memories, and external and internal experiences. There are three theories as to either how music conveys emotions, or the nature of the emotional response music is expected to evoke ; the theory of narration- imagination-identification, of isomorphism, and of ego mastery. The first is the narrative route, luring the audience to identify with the experiences and emotions appropriate to the narrative by arousing imagination. The second is the direct route, using messages that may activate directly, by means of their form, the emotions the composer and performer are interested in. The third is the indirect route, provoking the audience’s ego into that particular organizing activity that, according to the musician’s experience, may result in the emotional response the musician intends to arouse. The gifted composer and performer utilize all three routes. Composers think in terms of musical sounds, not of words or verbal concepts. Their creativity seem to be closely related to the ability to understand musical language, hypersensitivity to sounds, mother-infect relationship of pre-verbal period, and the mourning for the loss.
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