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Bruno Walter, world-renowned conductor, was a patient of Freud's for a very brief period sometime in 1904, when Walter was 28 years old. A view of Freud's technique as reported by a patient may be of interest—and is the raison d'être for this short essay.
Bruno Walter, originally Schlesinger, was born in a tenement section of Berlin on September 15, 1876. Very early in his career, he became an admirer of Gustav Mahler, who was instrumental in obtaining an early conducting post for Walter by writing to Dr. Theodor Loewe, the director of the Breslau Stadt theater, where there was a vacancy for a young conductor. Walter received the contract, but Loewe suggested that the young conductor change his family name of Schlesinger (literally, Silesian) because of its frequent occurrence in the capital of Silesia. Bruno chose Walter as his stage name, “thinking of Walter von Stolzing, Walther von der Vogelweide, and of Siegmund in Die Walküre, who would have liked to be Frohwalt but who was compelled to call himself Wehwalt” (Walter, 1946., p. 89).1 In 1911, when Walter became an Austrian citizen, the name was legalized.2