Freudians talk about the trauma suffered by children
who experience intense sexual feelings before they are able
to make words representing the sensations to themselves--
and thus are unable to find a way to remember and minimally
understand the feelings. Intense feelings are always more
difficult to handle when one can't articulate responses or
characterizations of the feelings. The beginning of
control-- of exercising agency-- is expression. In my
childhood memory, I not only could not participate in making
music (i.e., in joining it, in getting inside it), I could
not explain what I was feeling or why I was crying. "The
music!" I said, hoping the adults around me would know what
I meant. The fact that they didn't, that they couldn't see
why something I heard as beautiful could upset me so deeply,
put me even further outside the music, as well as set me
apart from the adults who didn't share or even recognize my
emotional response.
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