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This book consists of two parts. The first deals with the theoretical foundation of the problem as seen by psycho-analysis; the second part sets out to examine the problem itself.
After stating the difficulties peculiar to her undertaking (translation, lack of music), the author embarks on an explanation of the psycho-analytic principles employed throughout her book. The importance of infantile love, of infantile fixation and of repression is dwelt upon. The resemblance between the neurotic who dramatizes his desires in dreams and the poet who elaborates his day-dreams is pointed out.
It is obvious that this first part can offer nothing new or illuminating to anyone familiar with psycho-analysis. It is in the application of psycho-analysis to her specific problem that the author will find scope for ingenuity.
The father-daughter problem occupies, it is stated, a large part in Wagner's early work. We find it in Rienzi, in The Flying Dutchman, in Tannhäuser. This is brought into connection with some facts of Wagner's life. Here it would have been better to speak of a son-parent attachment, as Wagner's early feelings for his mother and sister are taken to explain his masterly understanding of Wotan and Brünhilde.
Brünhilde is taken as the prototype of the development of the exuberant girl-child into the mature woman, successful in her love-life. Her unwillingness to play the passive female part, her obedience to her father to whom her love belongs, her rebellion against his will, all this is typical of the growing daughter. Her limitations and her failure are the consequence of her father-fixation. It is of the deepest significance that Siegfried, her awakener, should be a child reared without parents and thus free from fixations himself.
This is the essence somewhat laboriously extracted from a book which is written in very obscure English. The interpretations are not very deep, but they are on the whole correct, though there is a distinct leaning towards the