Freudian Analysis of Tommy

(Hope you don't mind, Teddy--I added the picture of Ann Margaret, in the role of Tommy's mother, to your post.)

Hey y'all,

so while I was reading Freud's lectures concerning hysteria, I couldn't help but think how The Who's rock opera, Tommy, deals with what could be considered some form of hysteria. The main character, Tommy, witnesses the murder of a father figure and is told by his mother he "didn't hear it, didn't see it, and won't say nothing to no one never in [his] life."

Here's a link to Tommy.

5:22-to the end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5GBroq6dsM&feature=fvw

From this point on, Tommy is blind, deaf, and mute until finding a cure. Obviously these symptoms, in Freudian terms, are the convergence of emotional experiences and traumas, and because Tommy is unable to detach from his past, he ends up neglecting what is real in the present. One could go even further in considering the role of the mirror in the opera as the trigger for both the onset and recovery of the illness (Tommy saw the murder through the mirror/Once Tommy's mother "smashed the mirror", he was cured, or "free").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ohiEiNULCU&feature=related

Anyway, I've always loved the Who but now its on a completely different level. Ugh, so deep!

Here's a link to Tommy.