ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the ambitious and novel task of combining three seemingly disparate topics: animals, psychoanalysis, and music. Animals figure prominently in the world of music. The most famous animal music has to be the Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saens. Thus music and animals were associated centuries before the birth of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud cites music three times in The Interpretation of Dreams. His first reference blurs the distinction between auditory and visual images as he asserts that dreamers "hallucinate”. Animals in fairy tales may be thought of as analogies or equivalents of musical themes, i.e., as representations of unconscious ideas and conflicts that are nonverbal. The chapter examines how Serge Prokofieff's music enhances the universal themes. The transformation of orchestration is congruent with the earlier hypothesis that Prokofieff musically has developed the animals as externalizations of Peter's inner struggles.
