Coping Mechanism: The Pianist

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, recounts the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist, who miraculously survived the Holocaust. Throughout the movie, Szpilman’s musicality plays a key role in his survival: not only as a means of getting sympathy from others but also in enabling him to cope with the traumatic experiences he encounters. However, music did not always function successfully for Szpilman as a coping mechanism. In The Pianist, the emotional healing powers of music do not lie within music’s ability to escape into alternate, more desirable realities as a means of coping with a stressful situation. Rather, it is music’s ability to express emotions and reflect on complex experiences in order to begin to process them, which successfully function as coping mechanisms for Szpilman, allowing him to free his mind of burdensome emotions in order to continue on with his life.
Emotional expression is an effective means of coping because it actively approaches the stressor rather than avoiding it. Claire Ghetti’s Active Music Engagement with Emotional-Approach Coping to Improve Well-being in Liver and Kidney Transplant Recipients discusses effective approach oriented coping mechanisms, which attempt to understand the situation and to reevaluate the circumstances, and ineffective avoidance coping mechanisms, namely denial and suppression of emotions. Ghetti then goes on to discuss that an example of an approach coping mechanism is emotional-approach coping:
Emotional expression and processing may function as an approach-oriented coping strategy... The pathway by which EAC [emotional approach coping] works is not well understood, but it may relate to self-regulation theory in that EAC promotes the clarification and refra...

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...c experience, his survival does not only depend on their physical luck and the people who wanted to help him, but it also depended on their ability to express and understand their experiences in order to move on from it.

Works Cited
Ghetti, Claire M. "Active Music Engagement with Emotional-Approach Coping to Improve Well-being in Liver and Kidney Transplant Recipients." Journal of music therapy 48.4 (2011): 463-85. ProQuest. Web.

Packalén, Elina. "Music, Emotions, and Truth." Philosophy of Music Education Review. N.p.: Indiana University Press, 2008. 41-59. JSTOR. Web.

The Pianist. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finley. Universal Studios, 2002.
Young, David E. "Aesthetic Response as Coping Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective."
Studies in Art Education. N.p.: National Art Education Association, n.d. 5-15. JSTOR. Web.