A Phenomenological Enquiry into Focusing on Music

White, Jenny (2017) A Phenomenological Enquiry into Focusing on Music. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis develops the findings of my MA research and presents a phenomenological enquiry into the experiencing involved in focusing on music. It carries forward the notion that music can hold implicit meaning in what Eugene Gendlin, creator of focusing, terms as a “felt sense”. It asks participants to select music that says something about how they are feeling right now in order to establish if focusing on personally selected relevant music can unravel implicit experiencing. Music experiencing is further investigated by a semi-structured interview with the composer of one of the participants’ pieces of music.

The Literature Review explores further avenues into research on music emotions and feeling including neuroscience and quantitative research into music and sadness. In Methodology, Gendlin’s Philosophy of the Implicit is positioned against the background of phenomenological philosophy including William James and Merleau-Ponty, providing an account of the formation of the Experiencing Scale and how it can contribute a further phenomenological layer to the analytical tool Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This approach is presented in the Analysis section, which produces the main themes of the research alongside observations from the Experiencing Scale. The Discussion chapter explores the analysis from the theoretical perspectives gathered in the Literature Review, particularly through Philosophy of the Implicit and Gendlin’s philosophical treatise: A Process Model. The thesis concludes with an opportunity to conceptualize music by thinking further with Gendlin’s concepts.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	19 Jul 2018 14:15
Last Modified:	19 Jul 2018 14:15
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/67665
DOI:

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