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Opera as Case History: Freud's Dora, Strauss's Salome, and the Perversity of Modern Life

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/oq/kbu026

1476-2870

Lawrence Kramer,

Art, Aesthetics, and Perception

What is the historical relationship between psychoanalysis and music? To ask this question is tantamount to asking about the historical relationship between Freud and music, and so asked it may seem to be no question at all. Freud paid little heed to music and notoriously declared himself averse to it because he did not like to be moved without knowing why.1 Commenting on the situation in which a tune gets stuck in one's head, he states firmly that what matters is not the tune but the words associated with it. Interestingly, he does not pause to ask what we might conclude from the capacity of music to act as a displaced form of language.2 It would thus seem that Freud was bedeviled not only by the question Was will das Weib? but also by the equally vexing Sonate, que me veux-tu?—which, within a certain long-standing tradition, is exactly the same question.