1. Music represents a defense against the paranoid situation; song emerges in the face of the persecution by the bad objects;
2. Music at the same time represents a defense against the situation of melancholia. It appears as a means of denying one’s own guilt, and of recuperating the lost object;
3. The defense technique contained in music is the one of ‘driving out the Devil with Beelzebub’ (identification with the aggressor). Through music the bad objects (super-ego) are magically dominated… Summarizing, it can be said, that the technique of musical defense is the manic technique;
4. This triumph over the superego is possible above all, because music itself represents the good object. Union with music, therefore, gives the power to overcome the bad object, and identification with music converts the subject itself into a good one, i.e., a guiltless one. The manic fusion between ego and superego which is thus produced is equivalent to the erotic union with the primary objects;
5. On the one hand, through sound the ‘bad’ impulses (song is scream, i.e., respiratory oral, erotic and aggressive expression in the face of frustation) are expressed; on the other hand, sound expresses the denial of these same impulses (to sing is not to scream). In this sense, sound is a compromise between the id, the ego, and superego. At the same time it represents a defense against the loss of the object by submitting to the demands of the superego (defense against melancholia), and a defense against destruction by the bad objects by reversing the roles; (the attacked changes into the agressor by screaming: expression of the instincts).
Observation: This synthesis was presented by Richard Sterba in his 1965 Review Article for the American Imago.
Colloquium: Contemporary Brazilian Music and Thought 