ABSTRACT
Thomas Mann is close to the analyst's heart because of his rational attitude toward psychoanalysis and his respect for S. Freud. One must, however, agree with Hirschbach who maintains that the influence of psychoanalysis on Mann's writings should not be overestimated. He sees Freud's work as only one of the sources of Mann's intellectual, philosophical, and artistic outlook; and he mentions the German romanticists, and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner, and Goethe as having been of equal or greater importance. Frank Donald Hirschbach's framework is the history of ideas, and he sees the presence of the struggle in Mann's work as due to the influences of his intellectual and philosophic preceptors. The analyst would not deny the presence of this factor, but would be inclined to assign to it a secondary role; it determines the form in which a conflict is expressed, but it is not its cause. The analysis of biographical data promises to deepen our understanding of Mann's work.
