Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions we make in our lifetime. Career choice is more than working to earn a living but also an important window into how we identify and feel about ourselves. There are multiple issues involved in every career choice, particularly in the pursuit of a career in music performance. Influenced by her hybrid background in music performance, psychology, and psychoanalysis, Julie Jaffee Nagel addresses the joys and challenges of career choice in music, with a specific focus upon the classical performing musician. She addresses a wide range of pressing topics related to such a career choice at a time when jobs and income for musicians are diminishing and COVID-19 has had a monumental, long-term impact on the arts. This includes feelings of burnout, career change and redirection, the need for self-care, mental health issues related to the lack of jobs and income, and the oftentimes crippling standards of professional performing musicians. In addition, Nagel also points to potential opportunities and advocates new roles for musicians in the wake of a transformed music industry and society. Despite the numerous challenges performing musicians face in their careers, music can play a powerful role in mental life and society, helping us cope with the ravages and losses of the pandemic and other important events, and this can serve as much inspiration and reinvigorate professional musicians questioning the purpose of their career. All of these themes are developed through stories, clinical examples, anecdotes, research data, and personal reflection.

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions we make in our lifetime. Career choice is more than working to earn a living but also an important window into how we identify and feel about ourselves. There are multiple issues involved in every career choice, particularly in the pursuit of a career in music performance. Influenced by her hybrid background in music performance, psychology, and psychoanalysis, Julie Jaffee Nagel addresses the joys and challenges of career choice in music, with a specific focus upon the classical performing musician. She addresses a wide range of pressing topics related to such a career choice at a time when jobs and income for musicians are diminishing and COVID-19 has had a monumental, long-term impact on the arts. This includes feelings of burnout, career change and redirection, the need for self-care, mental health issues related to the lack of jobs and income, and the oftentimes crippling standards of professional performing musicians. In addition, Nagel also points to potential opportunities and advocates new roles for musicians in the wake of a transformed music industry and society. Despite the numerous challenges performing musicians face in their careers, music can play a powerful role in mental life and society, helping us cope with the ravages and losses of the pandemic and other important events, and this can serve as much inspiration and reinvigorate professional musicians questioning the purpose of their career. All of these themes are developed through stories, clinical examples, anecdotes, research data, and personal reflection.

What can psychoanalysis learn from music? What can music learn from psychoanalysis? Can the analysis of music itself provide a primary source of psychological data? Drawing on Freud's concept of the oral road to the unconscious, Melodies of the Mind invites the reader to take a journey on an aural and oral road that explores both music and emotion, and their links to the unconscious. In this book, Julie Jaffee Nagel discusses how musical and psychoanalytic concepts inform each other, showing the ways that music itself provides an exceptional non-verbal pathway to emotion - a source of 'quasi' psychoanalytical clinical data. The interdisciplinary synthesis of music and psychoanalytic knowledge provides a schema for understanding the complexity of an individual's inner world as that world interacts with social 'reality'. There are three main areas explored: The Aural Road Moods and Melodies The Aural/Oral Road Less Travelled Melodies of the Mind is an exploration of the power of music to move us when words fall short. It suggests the value of using music and ideas of the mind to better understand and address psychological, social, and educational issues that are relevant in everyday life. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists, music therapists, musicians, music teachers, music students, social workers, educators, professionals in the humanities and social services as well as music lovers. Julie Jaffee Nagel is a graduate of The Juilliard School, The University of Michigan, and The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. She is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

What can psychoanalysis learn from music? What can music learn from psychoanalysis? Can the analysis of music itself provide a primary source of psychological data? Drawing on Freud's concept of the oral road to the unconscious, Melodies of the Mind invites the reader to take a journey on an aural and oral road that explores both music and emotion, and their links to the unconscious. In this book, Julie Jaffee Nagel discusses how musical and psychoanalytic concepts inform each other, showing the ways that music itself provides an exceptional non-verbal pathway to emotion - a source of 'quasi' psychoanalytical clinical data. The interdisciplinary synthesis of music and psychoanalytic knowledge provides a schema for understanding the complexity of an individual's inner world as that world interacts with social 'reality'. There are three main areas explored: The Aural Road Moods and Melodies The Aural/Oral Road Less Travelled Melodies of the Mind is an exploration of the power of music to move us when words fall short. It suggests the value of using music and ideas of the mind to better understand and address psychological, social, and educational issues that are relevant in everyday life. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists, music therapists, musicians, music teachers, music students, social workers, educators, professionals in the humanities and social services as well as music lovers. Julie Jaffee Nagel is a graduate of The Juilliard School, The University of Michigan, and The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. She is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.