Whose Dream Is It? Why We Pursue Music Lessons

What are our intentions when we sign ourselves or our children up for music lessons? Do we entertain visions of great accomplishment, accompanied by great admiration from others? Do we imagine being noticed, respected, or envied by others whom we feel have not recognized, have ignored, or have dismissed us in the past? Is our desire for our children to learn an instrument entangled with our own regrets and feelings of failure? Do we desire to enjoy learning an instrument, or is something else driving us?

These are important questions to ask oneself when taking music lessons, and are at the heart of the question of process-focused versus product-focused motivation.

How the Ideal Self and Childhood Expectations Shape Motivation

Motivation is a highly individual process, and manifests from the tapestry of our past, our current circumstances, as well as the vision of the future we hold for ourselves. We call this future version of ourselves the ideal self, which we measure our current or actual self against. Our imagined future self is often a solution to feelings of inadequacy or inferiority that come from what we learned in childhood about parental, social, and cultural expectations.

Parents have the additional responsibility of remaining clear about what is our own unfinished business and what is the true interest of our child. Whose dream is it?

These are complicated considerations that, when sorted out and resolved before pursuing music lessons, can set the stage for a healthier, more enjoyable, and more effective learning experience. Two thinkers, Alfred Adler and Erich Fromm, offer useful insights into dealing with issues of this kind.

Adler's Insight

Alfred Adler described the benefits of understanding motivation as a desire to move from a sense of inferiority to a place of superiority. Superiority, in Adlerian terms, can manifest in two ways: as a healthful fulfillment of what one feels they could be, and, in its malignant form, a desire to control or dominate others. Different people are driven by different motivations, but they can all be understood as a shift from a position of deficit to a position of surplus, from a place of I'm not good enough to a place of I'm okay. In its pathological extreme, this motivation is driven to an extreme attitude of I'm better than others. This is what we call narcissism.

Fromm's Solution

Fetishized desire for admiration, being envied, or a preoccupation with being respected are hallmark qualities of malignant narcissism. Erich Fromm described these qualities of the marketing character type, which has become the celebrated norm of the social media generation. This pursuit, Fromm tells us, is empty and will eventually result in moral and spiritual despair. The healthful, mature solution to the natural feelings of inferiority can be described by what Fromm called the productive orientation of character.

Productive orientation is characterized by Fromm as: growth-oriented rather than goal-oriented, productive rather than stagnant, interested in the living biological rather than the dead artificial, and active thought rather than passive acceptance of social conventions. In other words, the productive character focuses on the process rather than the product.

Process vs. Product

Applying this lesson to music study allows us to free ourselves and our children from the unhealthful expectations of judgment, comparison to others, and the misuse of music to settle past scores with those we feel have abused us. The focus on process transforms the learning experience from a means to an end to an end in itself. The daily practice of sitting with the instrument, growing in our abilities from day to day, and enjoying the fruits of our daily commitment to working at the instrument affords a joy in the process of learning that is free from the judgmental expectations that so often contaminate the experience for most of us. We can find joy in simply working and playing music, without the approval, disapproval, acceptance, or rejection from others. This is an attitude of learning an instrument without the expectation of anything other than learning it to the best of our abilities.

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