Melodies of the Mind: Connections between Psychoanalysis and Music. By Julie Jaffee Nagel. New York:  Routledge, 2013,  168 pp., $38.39 paperback. Career Choices in Music Beyond the Pandemic: Musical and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. By Julie Jaffee Nagel. Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2023,  150 pp., $36 paperback. Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis. By Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michael Levin. New York:  Columbia University Press, 2023,  328 pp., $35 paperback.

The pandemic into which the world was plunged in early 2020 not only threatened lives but also ripped the social fabric, the myriad ways we habitually interacted with one another. Faces were masked, and meetings, classes, and religious gatherings were moved online. Shaking hands, once a token of goodwill, became risky and socially unsanctioned. People were locked in together too closely or were tragically isolated, soloing through illness, birth, and death. Weddings were postponed. Concert halls were shuttered.

Interaction, ritual, the marking of time, shared physical space, and the presence of other bodies experienced with all five senses—previously taken for granted—were abruptly torn away. We moved into a world where the other's breath could spell death.

In this context, in the year 2023 alone, two books on psychoanalysis and music appeared on the scene, as well as an entire issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry (Paddock, 2023). Coincidence? Partly. The seeds for these

publications had been germinating for much longer. Still, they spoke into a pressingly salient theoretical void and cultural need. These books, in different ways and on different levels, spoke to the need for a renewed “musicalization” between the individual and the cultural surround, within the individual, and within the special interactions that constitute the activity of the consulting room and the concert venue. They spoke to the need on the part of musicians for cultural support and on the part of individuals for the healing effects of music.

Taken together, these books present a rich tapestry of meanings that I shall try to evoke through quotations from each. By way of illustration, I shall include examples from my own experience and the culture at large. I hope to suggest something of the deep synergy between music and psychoanalysi