ABSTRACT

In February 1946, Hans Keller made his first approach to the BBC, offering a talk on Freud. Keller's suggestion to the BBC of a talk on Freud is indicative of his predominant intellectual preoccupations up to that time. Keller's work and correspondence with the educational psychologist Margaret Phillips was very significant in the development of his psychological interests. Keller's intense interest in the psychology of social groups is significant, as he was throughout his life a passionate individualist. His individualism was central to his personality and was continually in evidence, but nowhere more so than in his often stormy relations with the BBC, the only organization of which he was a full-time member. Keller's earliest musical publications took him initially in three main directions: general musical journalism, film music, and the music of Benjamin Britten. His involvement with film music stemmed partly from his increasingly broad application of psychoanalytical ideas and partly from an intense interest in contemporary mass media.