ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud adheres to the sense of the libretto as his melophobia enacts the resistance to the power of tunefulness generally. Freud confesses that his pleasure in art, particularly literature and sculpture, resides in the intellectual challenge they pose to interpretation, rather than in the sensuous appreciation of aesthetic qualities. He proceeds to describe the dream and give what has seemed to others an extremely “circumstantial” interpretation in which the aria disappears from both the dream and the analysis. He typically regards the fennel stalk or reed as “a penis symbol”, a tube in which the unconscious connection and reversal between urine and fire takes place, ultimately associating fire with sexual desire and excitation. Jacques Lacan says nothing of music, and neither does he regard Freud’s relationship with Fliess as having anything other than marginal significance in his reading of Freud’s Irma dream.
