Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

January 17, 1982. SOME VICISSITUDES OF CREATIVITY: PSYCHOANALYTIC NOTES ON RICHARD STRAUSS. Charles Goodstein, M.D.

Following the achievement of recognition and eminence by the beginning of the twentieth century, Richard Strauss suffered a precipitous decline in creativity. While

some disagree with this musicological assessment, it appears to be a prevailing view and served as a point of departure for Dr. Goodstein's psychobiographical inquiry. In his presentation, he drew from biographical sources, from impressions of prominent contemporaries, and from the composer's music in form and content.

Richard Strauss was born into a household where the mother was a quiet, melancholic woman with "sensitive nerves" who was "almost not there," while the father, an ill-tempered, rigid perfectionist, was the dominant parent. Driven by ambition for his prodigy son, the father, an acclaimed horn player, subjected his son to rigorous musical training, impressing upon him his preference for classical masters and his virulent opposition to Wagner. Dr. Goodstein suggested that the father was later depicted in the moralistic, unyielding, tyrannical characters of Strauss's male protagonists, while his heroines were frequently remote and unattainable. Dr. Goodstein related the development of Strauss's early style to his relationship with his father: his adolescent works reflected an imitation of masters of classicism and romanticism which bordered on plagiarism. Later, his emotional disengagement from paternal influence was expressed in his choice of a series of pro-Wagnerian mentors and through his abandonment of the classical sonata form in favor of Wagnerian program music.

At mid-life Strauss was successful, content, and a model of restraint and order. His works of the period introduced certain patterns which persisted in later works: unashamed rhapsodizing of himself, themes of betrayal and deception, and characters of dubious gender. In the wake of his father's death an