Identity, Aesthetics, and Sound in the Fin de Siecle Redesigning Perception [Paperback]

This book is an analytic and historical portrait of the volatile decades at the beginning of the 20th century. Engaging with avant-garde art and thought, and concentrating on two of the most controversial and still culturally relevant personalities of Viennese modernism - Sigmund Freud and Arnold Schoenberg - it tells the story of a cultural experiment of unprecedented proportions, an experiment that attempted to redesign the senses and the concept of individual identity. The book describes the shape of this identity through its mutually overlapping artistic and intellectual dimensions, as it explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and music.

Introduction  1. The Acoustic Symptom  2. The Psychology of Expectation  3. The Play of the Senses  4. Acoustic Perspectives  5. Echoes  6. Psychology of Distances  7. The Anatomy of Namelessness  8. Schoenbergs Oedipus  9. Interpretation of Dreams: Theory of Harmony.  Conclusion: The Passion for the Real.

Dariusz Gafijczuk is currently teaching and researching at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.