The Psycho-Neurologic Implications in Musical Phenomenon: Music and Personal Development

Abstract

Contemporary society shows a growing preoccupation in identifying certain techniques which facilitate personal development, with strategies that work swiftly and effectively. The search for identity, for the Self, is in fact the search for the purpose of life. What best matches one’s real identity should be the equivalent of identifying one’s vocation and the intrinsic destiny for which an individual is efficiently structured. Self-knowledge is the antechamber of all answers and the axis that places us in the environment in which we can accomplish our best performances. The goal of this article is to bring together two theories, stemming from opposing historical boundaries, the catharsis and the self-management, in order to support the onset of a concept that would justify the necessity of integrating art into people’s lives as an essential part of self-development processes. The arguments supporting this new idea are gathered from the contributions of neurosciences, cognitive motivational literature and musicological studies.