Hearing Like a Musician: Integrating Sensory Perception of Self into a Social Theory of Self-Reflexivity

In Mead’s philosophy, we develop and present ourselves in anticipation of an audience, taking the role of other to “see” ourselves as we will be seen. But what we see when we take the position of other is not in fact what the other sees of ourselves. It is only the visible side of our experience that the other can grasp, leaving hidden our interior experiences. This article speaks to this conundrum left by Mead’s writing, presenting the training of musicians as a strategic site for showing why we need to go beyond Mead in social psychology, adding what Merleau-Ponty shows us of how we work on the invisible side of our experience. This research examines how classical music teachers work with students to deliberately transform their inner experience of their sound to align their self-perception with how others perceive them.