Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Dr. Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas "This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You" (Vintage)







I found this book very interesting- the main author was a recording engineer for years (working with such people as Prince and Bare Naked Ladies) and has many stories about how creating an album works. After being an engineer, she went back to college and became a neuroscientist, specializing in how music and sound work in people’s brains (Ogas, her co-author, is also a neuroscientist who works in sound). So she understands music and sound from multiple angles. She explains what the seven different aspects of music are- lyrics, melody, rhythm, timbre, novelty, realism, and authenticity- and how they work. She talks about doing ‘record pulls’, where multiple people bring out their favourite music and share it, and how, if you like a certain musician, you’ll probably like musician “X”, also. It’s an educational read.

But- there is always a but- at no point does it tell you what the music says about you. I was kind of expecting something that told you how empathetic you were or if you were forward-thinking. So, I enjoyed the book which has lots of anecdotes about working in the music industry and lots of neurology information but the title is a little deceptive.

Anthony Stevens "Jung: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford Paperbacks)






I have enjoyed a dozen books in the ‘Very Short Introduction’ series but I must say this one on Jung is the best I’ve come across. You will not find a clearer presentation of the life and psychology of Carl Jung. Quite an accomplishment since Jung’s approach to the psyche and therapy is revolutionary and multifaceted. Since the subjects covered in this short introduction are so rich in content, for the purposes of this review, here are a few quotes along with my comments, starting with Jung’s break with his teacher and mentor in the world of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud.

“As time passed, Jung’s differences with Freud became harder to conceal. Two of Freud’s basic assumptions were unacceptable to him: (1) that human motivation is exclusively sexual and (2) that the unconscious mind is entirely personal and peculiar to the individual.” --------- Turns out, this is the difference for Jung that made all the difference. In Jung’s view, we humans have many reasons for doing what we do well beyond the boundaries of sexuality. And also, the human unconscious taps into the entire range of experiences we have developed as a species over millions of years

“Moreover, beneath the personal unconscious of repressed wishes and traumatic memories, posited by Freud, Jung believed there lay a deeper and more important layer that he was to call the collective unconscious, which contained in potential the entire psychic heritage of mankind. . . . The existence of this ancient basis of the mind had first been hinted to him as a child when he realized that there were things in his dreams that came from somewhere beyond himself. Its existence was confirmed when he studied the delusions and hallucinations of schizophrenic patients and found them to contain symbols and images which also occurred in myths and fairy tales all over the world. --------- Again, Jung acknowledged there is a personal component to the unconscious realm we encounter in our dreams, but this is only the start: there is an ocean of unconscious energy deeper and wider than the personal – the collective unconscious. Thus, Jung’s lifelong fascination with symbols, such as mandalas, numbers, mythic animals, light-infused and shadowy superhuman presences.

“What distinguishes the Jungian approach to developmental psychology from virtually all others is the idea that even in old age we are growing toward the realization of or full potential. . . . aging was not a process of inexorable decline but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential. ‘The decisive question for a man is: is he related to something infinite or not?’ ---------- A critical difference from Freud: what happens in our psyche isn’t always about working out our relationship with our mother and father buried in our personal past; rather, every stage in the human cycle, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, old age, has its own powerful psychic energies and challenges. It is our task to accept the challenges at each stage of our life to reach the full flowering of our humanity. Thus, for Jung, psychotherapy isn’t so much about curing illness as it is about personal growth.



“Jung held it to be the business of the psychologist to investigate the collective unconscious and the functional units of which it is composed – the archetypes, as he eventually called them. Archetypes are ‘identical psychic structures common to all, which together constitute ‘the archaic heritage of humanity’. ---------- The author devotes two entire chapters to Jung’s archetypes: the Self, the ego, the shadow, the persona, the anima/animus. And, what is an archetype? By way of example, we read: “One example which Jung frequently quoted was that of a schizophrenic patient who told him that if he stared at the sun with half-closed eyes he would see that the sun had a phallus and that this organ was the origin of the wind. Years later Jung came across a Greek text describing an almost identical vision.’ In other words, the archetype images we encounter in dreams belong to a common dream language we share will all humans, including our prehistoric ancestors and peoples of all world cultures and societies. And, according to Jung, these archetypical images can be understood as promptings to encourage our growth.

“In working on a dream the starting-point for Jung was not interpretation but ‘amplification’ – that is, to enter into the atmosphere of the dream to establish its mood as well as the detail of its images and symbols, in such a way as to amplify the experience of the dream itself. Then its impact on consciousness is enhanced. ---------- Dreams are central to Jungian analysis. And if you are interested in pursuing Jung’s vision of what it means to live a fully human life, reading this small book would be a great place to start.

Slavoj Zizek "Trouble In Paradise" (Penguin)




Zizek is an iconoclast whose writing is often impenetrable but can also, at times be thought-provoking and entertaining. The best parts of the book are his analyses of the 2007-2008 banking crisis and the various wars in the middle east. The most difficult parts are his complex analyses of the struggles in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine, and his general thesis about the need to reformulate communism as a bulwark against the worst excesses of modern-day capitalism.

It is as if the trouble feeds on itself: the march of capitalism has become inexorable, the only game in town. Setting out to diagnose the condition of global capitalism, the ideological constraints we are faced within our daily lives, and the bleak future promised by this system, Slavoj Žižek explores the possibilities - and the traps - of new emancipatory struggles.

His writing is most entertaining when he wanders off into analogies based on works of popular culture and jokes. Thus, he explains why masturbation is more satisfying than full sex, how zombies and vampires reflect the class struggle (zombies are the down-trodden masses, vampires are the wealthy aristocracy) and how the present state of world politics is reflected in Batman movies. So, whilst I may infer it is more readable than expected, it is still a mind-warping ride.

Oliver Sacks "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" (Picador)





The book is a series of case studies of people with severe psychological problems. This makes it quite scary (many of the stories are ‘so-and-so was normal, and then they just lost any sense of where their own limbs were, or the ability to recognize their wife’ and the conclusion to lots of them is ‘they lived with their condition’) and it feels rather dated in places (hard to tell, because I am not at the cutting edge of current psychological research, but I feel that some of the things he authoritatively tells us are not the way we would frame things now) and also a little uncomfortable (he cares for his patients, but there is a deeply paternalistic tone, and also the book is basically a ‘look at the freaky people’). Strangely religious, or at least with more questions about the soul, and whether people are connected to the meaning of the world, than you would expect from a pop science book nowadays.

The first section centres on losses - some patients suffer from disorders which affect the memory, others have lost the ability to undertake normal motor functions, and some have phantom limbs where amputations have occurred. All of the cases are tragic and yet fascinating in equal measure.

The second part focuses on excesses, looking at specific cases of patients with Tourettes, a patient with sudden lack of inhibition brought on by syphilis contracted 70 years previously, and a man considered a riot to all around him, who confabulates in a hilarious manner yet sadly has no true understanding of self remaining.

In 'Transports', Sacks talks about fascinating cases such as the woman who suddenly starts hearing Irish music continuously for months on end, and has previously inaccessible childhood memories awakened by the music. Perhaps my favourite was the case of the man who, after taking mind-bending drugs, had a super heightened sense of smell for a year, to the point where he could sniff out people like a dog.

The final section, 'The World of the Simple', exemplifies just how amazingly complex the human brain is. In many of the cases cited, despite the patients being scientifically considered retarded with very low IQs, they had amazing cognitive abilities, such as the ability to learn 2,000 operas in their entirety, or to instantaneously perform complex mathematical computations. These heightened abilities of siloed intelligence are juxtaposed with their general neurological limitations, and Sacks explains how many such patients can be 'reached' by vehicles such as music, drama, nature and numbers.

But it was an interesting read – the discussion of when things are pathologist and when they make us who we are was fascinating - and a good book for teaching people the word proprioception (from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own", "individual," and capio, capere, to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement).

I seem to have woken up early again and hence decided to add to the journal. In fact,  I was awoken with another thud. The cat had climbed over my stack of books and felled them, including a heavy Oxford Thesaurus and a hardback on Bebop Jazz.

Talking of books, I am now halfway through the Foucault book and almost finished the Zizek essay "On Woman and Causality", which is about courtly love and the object of desire being unobtainable. Seems rather appropriate for a week that contains Valentines Day.