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In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, we have experienced a loss of focus on internal life and its underlying meanings in our tumultuous social, political, artistic, and economic milieu. Demand for quick fixes for long-standing emotional, political, economic, and social problems have had far-reaching effects on American society and around the world. Recent Federal initiatives in the United States emphasize detailed study of brain function without a call for better understanding of the functions of the mind in motivating mental illness and mental health. Popular trends in media reporting emphasize celebrity idealization and instant access to Internet insights which accentuate simplicity, quick answers, and sound bites. In higher education, many American university psychology and psychiatry departments have been jettisoned and/or minimized emphasis on psychodynamic ideas as a theory and treatment modality. We are in agreement with Prudence Gourguechon (2011) who calls this a “public health crisis … a national emergency of superficiality, of simplification of cause and effect, and of ignoring or trivializing the inner life” (p. 448). While it is not our intention here to explore contemporary crises in mental health, society, economics, politics, arts, and education in this issue, we do emphasize that music and psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on both manifest and latent meanings, are relevant to this discussion and are emphasized through the cumulative scholarship, wisdom, and implications of the articles in this volume. There is an intersection between theories of mind and theories of music which are implicated in how we tune in and hear ourselves and our surroundings (Nagel, 2013).
Psychoanalytic and musical knowledge can contribute to many areas that impact human motivation, critical thinking, decision-making, and our quality of life while probing beneath external events and simplistic solutions to thorny and complex questions. Responsible and informed