Effects of Interpersonal Dynamics in the Student-Teacher Dyads on Diagnostic and Remedial Content of Four Private Violin Lessons

Theories of interpersonal dynamics have been an integral part of research in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and the social sciences but have not been systematically applied to music teaching. The present study makes use of Sigmund Freud's theory of the defence mechanisms of the personality, demonstrating how these mechanisms operate in shaping the diagnostic and remedial content of the student- teacher dyad in four private violin lessons. Drawn from 12 hours of videotaped lessons, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the behaviours of eight subjects supports the hypothesis that the manifest contents of the lesson interactions are dominated by the unconscious aims of either or both members of the dyad. These findings are consistent with the extensive psychiatric literature on the defences of personality in everyday life and suggest that observation and interpretation of these phenomena are of value to teachers and educators interested in the relation between task and personality in the setting of the private lesson.