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The psychological functions of music have so far attracted little attention and the field remains relatively unexplored, particularly in the area of the song lyric. For some time I was marginally aware that early morning whistling by members of my family often expressed the mood of the moment—happy, sad, resigned, or hopeful. Usually only a phrase or two was being whistled but, as I thought of the lyrics for that part of the tune, they would give me the clue to the mood; for example, OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNIN' from Oklahoma! or He Floats Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease, THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE.1 Often the whistler could not have recalled the words. It was a song without conscious words.
More or less coincident with this observation came the realization that a patient who had been in analysis for some time had established a pattern of reporting snatches of songs which occurred to him during our session or at other times. These song fragments had an insistent quality that he did not understand. Occasionally he would recognize a link between the remembered and plaguing words and the content of a previous