An Insight into Richard Wagner and his Works: (A Psychoanalytical Fragment.)

Analysts have long recognized that painters, writers, composers, architects and other creative artists project their emotional feelings and conflicts into their creations. Further, they have recognized that observers who have been sensitized by an antecedent biography similar to a given artist are generally deeply moved by the works of that artist.

Through the composer's music, the writer's novels, the painter's landscapes and the architect's skyscrapers, they sense an emotional kinship with the personality behind the creation. The work becomes the psychological common denominator.

This response is noticeable in its simplest form by the everyday expressions used to justify attitudes towards artists or their works, such as, “His paintings strike a note with me,” “I lived every minute of her story,” “That play carried me away,” or to look into more current colloquialisms, “His music sends me,” and I'm mad for Bach.” It is noticeable, too, even in negative reactions, such as, “What on earth do you see in Mozart?” and “Beethoven leaves me cold.”

As revealed in psychoanalysis, this reaction in its more intense forms has a double significance. First, a neurotic and empathic preoccupation with an artist is a clue in itself to the patient's problems. Second, through a study of patients who react repeatedly and deeply to an artist's works, the analyst can clearly see the psychological pattern of the artist mirrored before him. (What matter the artist may have lived generations before?)