As an art form, opera is particularly well-suited as subject matter for psychoanalytic investigation. The great operas tell stories, in words and in music, that unfold timeless and universal themes of love, death, war, power, rivalry, class, and religious faith. With opera’s unique integration of music, lyrics, stagecraft, and acting, these themes are brought to life in drama and in character. A particular strength of opera is its potential to convey emotional complexity and conflict on multiple levels and in multiple registers simultaneously. The music may support, reflect, and add nuance to the emotions and lyrics evident on stage, or may suggest unconscious emotions underlying, and even contrasting with, what the audience witnesses. The synergistic power of opera affords a penetrating and complex view of character and motivation, emotion and meaning, to which both opera and psychoanalysis aspire.

It is not surprising that the application of psychoanalytic thinking to the arts and music begins with Freud and his early circle of adherents. Freud arrived at his intellectual maturity in fin de siècle Vienna, a city of two million people characterized by a surge of creative activity in the arts, music, sciences, and humanities. The cultural milieu of museums, concert halls, and myriad salons and coffee houses set the stage for an unusual cross-fertilization among disciplines (Gay, 1988; Kandel, 2012; Schorske, 1980). For Freud and his early followers, clinical discoveries illuminated artistic and cultural realms, while the artistic and cultural realms contributed invaluably to clinical thinking. Topics such as group phenomena, culture, and the arts were considered to be integral aspects of psychoanalytic study. Prominent within the 24-volume Standard Edition of Freud’s work are a number of essential papers and monographs on topics that would only later be labeled “applied psychoanalysis” (e.g. Freud, 1910, 1911, 1914, 1928). While the term may have had the effect of marginalizing this area of psychoanalytic research, it is clear that psychoanalysis from Freud to the present time offers not only a comprehensive basis for the exploration and treatment of mental life in the clinic, but also a body of hypotheses and observations that can be used to investigate a variety of non-clinical fields of inquiry.

The collection of essays in this volume emerged from more than a decade of collaboration between the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the San Francisco Opera in a program known as “Opera on the Couch.” Following Sunday matinee performances of selected operas, two psychoanalysts present psychoanalytic discussions of the opera just performed to a group of audience members. The presentations, open to the public at no charge, allow for a substantial period of dialogue with the audience, which typically includes not only psychoanalysts but also individuals from a diverse range of intellectual backgrounds and professions. Over time, the enthusiastic response to our discussions and the interplay between responses from those immersed in psychological theories and those coming from other disciplines became an impetus for this volume. A generative experience for all, a number of participating psychoanalysts were inspired to expand their informal talks into more fully developed papers for publication. This synergy carries over into this book, especially in the final chapter, written by a noted musicologist and distinguished discussant at many national psychoanalytic meetings.

Psychoanalytic theories and concepts develop and expand the meanings of an opera at multiple levels that include the creative process of the composer, the nature of the dramatic action, the music and the ways in which music and words interrelate, and the ways in which particular productions emphasize and interpret psychological themes. For example, a psychoanalytic approach can render intelligible the unconscious motivations of central characters, as well as the determinative traumas and other life events that contribute to character formation and interpersonal relationships. A further expansion of meaning might involve illumination of the ways in which the instrumental music constitutes an “orchestral” (S. Goldberg, 2011, p. 58) register of experience that tells a story richer than, and sometimes at variance with, the sung words alone. This musical dimension may amplify, specify, or carry more than what the characters consciously know. The psychoanalytic awareness of multiple voices speaking in multiple registers of consciousness and unconsciousness offers the opera audience a deeper understanding of motivation, character, and conflict – in the drama, and in ourselves.