A lecture given before the Wiener Goethe-Verein, an audience not schooled analytically. Consequently a great part is taken up in explaining analytic methods and the application of them to literature.

Newer research—so the author avers—has found out the great importance his father had on Goethe's development; the mother's influence has always been fully recognized. Very convincingly it is shown how many events of Goethe's life seem a repetition of his father's. Thus his Italian Journey, and all it meant to him. With both men it was connected with a greater freedom in love, cutting them loose from the earlier stricter attitude. But alas his collector's passion, his didactic talents, his capacity for friendship—in earlier life as the receiving, in later life as the giving party—they are all reminiscent of the father. The softer, motherly side is continued in his affection for Christiane, his wife, who to him represents a distinct mother imago. Here again he identifies himself with the father in choosing a woman so much his junior.