Letting Go of Performance Anxiety and Optimizing Musical Performance in a Case of Traumatic Loss

The article introduces a model integrating psychoanalytic psychotherapy with neurofeedback, in a case of performance anxiety in a professional musician. The author uses a neurofeedback approach that is comprehensive and adaptive, emphasizing a renormalizing of brainwaves, rather than producing specific states or shifts in particular bandwidths in the EEG. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is used to address the musician's history of traumatic loss. The case is outlined, and improvements are described in terms of optimized musical performance and improved coping under pressure.