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Donald Mitchell's book “Gustav Mahler, The Early Years”,* is of great interest, not only because Mahler sought Freud's help in the crisis of his life, but because musicologists are turning more and more to Psychoanalysis to explain behaviour patterns in the subjects of their special study.
It is therefore undoubtedly appropriate that the ‘Imago Group London’, specialising as it does in the applications of psychoanalysis to human activities, should from time to time concern itself with work by experts in their own field, who have employed or drawn attention to psychoanalytical techniques.
“Gustav Mahler, The Early Years” is a very clear-headed biography, which not only presents Mahler's character and psychology as far as his contemporaries, and indeed Freud himself could observe them, but produces much material on the basis of which an attempt can be made to observe Mahler, not only in terms of the Freudian techniques of 1910, but also in terms of the more modern techniques not as yet obsorbed by the culture.
The essential dates of Mahler's life are as follows; he was born in July 1860, married in March 1902, consulted Freud in August 1910, and died in May 1911, though the onset of his last illness dated from late February of that year.
On the subject of his approaching marriage, his wife Alma Mahler (1) quotes him as saying, “If only you had had a love affair or were a widow it would be alright”, and commenting