Women Characters In Richard Wagner. by Louise Brink. Nervous and Mental Monograph Series No. 37. New York and Washington: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1924.

In this monograph the psychoanalytic method of investigation reveals the fundamental impulses out of which developed the artistic trends and products of Wagner's genius. In a scholarly way Dr. Brink has interpreted the roles of the several female characters of Wagner's classic in a manner contributary not only to the better understanding of Wagner's own conflicts and identifications, but to the whole question of the behavior of psychic mechanisms in force from childhood to adult years.

In the analysis of this great variety of feminine characters particular attention has been paid to persistent family attachments, the severance of the bonds and the acceptance of new interests and relationships with emphasis on the deviation of the early love trends, which may become permanently withdrawn from the reproductive channel and later serve the separate ends of the ego.

Most of the knowledge of Wagner's life gained both in past and recent years, while valuable, is limited in this respect because it has been presented at the descriptive level. Accurate description of facts is obviously necessary to any investigation even in matters concerned with art which is so clearly a product of the unconscious, but psychoanalytic research is not satisfied to remain at the descriptive level and seeks to penetrate into the profound causes and meaning of these life forces in an attempt to bring the obscure to the light for a better understanding of character with its peculiarities. Upon such questions as the morality of the Wagnerian dramas, which are frequently misunderstood from the surface expression of the story; this and future psychoanalytic studies will cast illumination, in fact we may depend upon these studies to reveal the structure of motives and the many conflicts and contrasts which lie in the depths of nature's evolutional scheme.

It is recognized that much remains to be accomplished along the same paths represented by this monograph, and even in the particular field covered by i