Music performance anxiety: Contested issues

In this presentation, I discuss four ongoing conceptual problems with the field of music performance anxiety (MPA). Failure to resolve these issues will prove a continuing impediment to this field of study. The first issue is the relationship between music performance anxiety and social anxiety disorder (SAD). Is MPA a SAD? If not, is it a distinct diagnosis or part of another diagnostic cluster like generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)? Is it a unitary phenomenon or does it contain subtypes? The second issue concerns the way in which we theorize anxiety generally and the roles of cognition, emotion, and physiology. To date, most conceptualizations have been cognitive in emphasis. The role of emotion has been neglected in theorizing anxiety and its treatment as has the Freudian notion of anxiety as a “danger signal.” The third issue relates to conceptual and definitional issues, that is, how music performance anxiety is defined. The fourth issue is the upsurge of positive psychology and its treatments (e.g., daily affirmations, positive self-talk, meditation, visualization, imagery) that are based on suppression or denial of emotion, in particular, emotional distress. Reliance on these forms of intervention can be unhelpful and, in some cases, damaging.