Dans cet article, nous décrivons de manière rétrospective le vécu de patients atteints de schizophrénie ou troubles de l’humeur lors d’un atelier d’écoute musicale hebdomadaire s’étant tenu pendant trois ans. Ces patients avaient pour seule consigne de se mettre dans la plus grande disponibilité d’écoute possible. En choisissant de nous placer dans une perspective phénoménologique (requérant la suspension de tout cadre théorique préalable), nous rapportons leur comportement et leurs dires. Chez un nombre plus restreint de sujets, lors d’interviews basées sur la méthode de l’entretien d’explicitation, nous avons eu accès à la description de leur rapport à la musique. L’importance primordiale de la temporalité, au cœur même de l’expérience musicale, comme ouvrant la voie vers un espace commun avec autrui, apparaît alors ; elle est ensuite discutée à la lumière des écrits de Schutz, de Kimura et d’autres phénoménologues.

Music is a universal activity in human beings. In patients with mental diseases, like in non-diseased subjects, music belongs to the daily experience, whatever their disease. In schizophrenia, we have observed that patients listen to music very often and with a high loudness. Currently music therapy is accepted as a powerful additional care in many neurologic and psychiatric diseases but we don’t know how does the music “works” to improve patient's symptomatology. In our psychiatry department, we have proposed during three years, a group specifically devoted to music listening. The patients were in a symptomatic phase of their disease (schizophrenia or mood disorders). Each week, about 20 patients came to listen to various kinds of music (songs, pop music, classical music, Japanese music…). The unique instruction was to listen to the music pieces and to talk only about them. Frequently the piece of music was rapidly introduced by the group leader (a physician playing music) about style, history and instruments. We have constructed this group in a phenomenological (husserlian) approach: this means that we used no theoretical framework (as cognitive or psychoanalytical one), and we choose to make pure descriptions of the patients’ experiences, by suspending any preconception. During these 3 years, we have collected patients’ behavioural data and their spontaneous claims at the end of each meeting. Then, using semi-directive interviews as a variation of Vermersch's eliciting interview, we have collected detailed information about the nature and content of the musical experience in a sub-group of 7 patients. The most striking result of this open study is that music proposed to the patients “changes their time”. They frequently forget their disease and they feel better during about one day. These temporality modifications allow them to open a new common space for dialogue with other people. We discuss these temporality modifications in the light of philosophers such as Schutz or Kimura.