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A method of musical psycho-analysis — "Freudian music analysis" — is presented and applied to the analysis of John Lennon's personal experiences behind "Hello Little Girl", the first song he said he ever wrote. The method is based on Freud's theory and method of interpretation of dreams. Lennon explicitly associated "Hello Little Girl" with his mother and said that "it all was very Freudian". This statement — together with the fact that Lennon was left by both of his parents before the age of 18 months — is the starting-point of the psycho-analytic interpretation. "Hello Little Girl" is suggested to be a result of regressive transformations — condensations, displacements — of several songs with which it shares common musical features, and whose lyrics reflect an emotional content very similar to that of John Lennon's at the time. These regressive transformations are assumed to represent the repressed thoughts and feelings of Lennon: the shame and fear of being left alone, wishes of belongingness, and eventually the grief due to the actual loss of his mother by death. |
