This paper investigates attachment themes in the life history narratives of professional orchestral musicians and their relationship with music performance anxiety (MPA). Narrative accounts derived from open-ended in-depth interviews of ten professional musicians were analysed from an attachment perspective using content and thematic analysis. We hypothesized that the performance setting re-triggers unprocessed feelings related to early attachment experiences, especially when traumatic, and that defensive manoeuvres against their re-emergence into consciousness are activated. The interviews identified early relational trauma as a relevant etiological factor in the MPA-symptomatic of the musicians studied. A case is made for the addition of an attachment-informed life-course model rather than a purely symptomatic approach to understanding and treating severe MPA and other intra-personal psychodynamics of performing musicians.
The main objective of this study was to analyse the psychometric properties of the Polish adaptation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory – Revised (K-MPAI-R, Kenny, 2009) modified as the Kenny Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-PAI) for a general population of individuals with experience in public performance in fields other than music. Another aim was to test the factor structure of K-PAI on a Polish sample. We analysed the relationship between the scores on K-PAI and general anxiety, depression, attentional control, the scores on the Behavioural Inhibition Scale (BIS) and the Behavioural Activation Scale (BAS) and reward susceptibility. Participants (N = 586) completed the questionnaires in a wider online study. The scores on K-PAI revealed a moderate to strong positive association with different measures of anxiety, trait-anxiety in particular, and negative associations with attentional control and susceptibility to reward. K-PAI scores were strongly associated with depression, but displayed no relationship with the BAS or any of its sub-dimensions. These results generally replicated those obtained on the K-MPAI-R with Australian and Peruvian musicians, indicating the cross-cultural validity of the K-MPAI-R and K-PAI. It is suggested that performance anxiety develops on the basis of the biological predispositions and early negative experiences in performance contexts.
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