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Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (The Standard Edition) (Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud)

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Freud's attempt to apply the concepts and generalisations of psychoanalysis to the Universal Man, Leonardo da Vinci. The formulations reached in the book have now become "pop-Freudian" cliches: the subject was doted on by his mother, neglected by his father and therefore developed a homosexual streak. What occured exactly, according to Freud, was an inordinate Oedipal development in which the subject took his father's domination of the mother as a "de facto" domination (hence prohibition on the father's part) of *all* women and hence it triggered a shift from heterosexual to homosexual tendencies. Freud applies his doctrine of infantile sexuality to address other topics such as Leonardo's prodigious genius, his scientific pursuits and the fact that he left so many works unfinished. The study is speculative and tendentious and, which is more, it is marred by an egregious error in the translation of one of Leonardo's notebooks. Its major shortcoming is its rather reckless and overconfident attempt to reconstruct the psycholgy of a man dead for centuries. For zealous partisans of psychoanalysis only, or for those who have an academic interest in the subject.

There are a couple of mistakes in this book. Freud translate "nibbio" into vulture instead of kite. He also questions Leonardo's "active" homosexuality, but this was a "well known fact" in Florence. The discussion on repression and sublimation reveals, in my opinion, some limits of his theory as these terms are hard to define. However the discussion on the two paintings, the Monna Lisa and Sant'Anna and the Madonna with the child and on some of the roots of homosexuality is great, and Freud is a great writer.

Freud wrote this short work in 1910, and it was one of the earliest attempts to apply the techniques of psycho-analysis to figures of the past. Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Observation of men's daily lives shows us that most people succeed in directing very considerable portions of their sexual instinctual forces to their professional activity. The sexual instinct is particularly well fitted to make contributions of this kind since it is endowed with a capacity for sublimation."
"Under the influence of this threat of castration (the boy) now sees the notion he has gained of the female genitals in a new light; henceforth he will tremble for his masculinity, but at the same time he will despise the unhappy creatures on whom the cruel punishment has, as he supposes, already fallen."
"Biologically speaking, religiousness is to be traced to the small human child's long drawn-out helplessness and need of help; and when at a later date he perceives how truly forlorn and weak he is when confronted with the great forces of life, he feels his own condition as he did in childhood, and attempts to deny his own despondency by a regressive revival of the forces which protected his infancy."

In this small book Freud takes a mistranslated childhood memory of Leonardo's--one in which a kite (Freud thought it a vulture) opens the baby's mouth with its tail feathers--and makes a case for a genius born out of wedlock left alone too much with his mother, and therefore prone to homosexuality. Lame.

As always, though, Freud at least arrives in the ballpark, even if he doesn't understand the game. Initial memories are often strangely prophetic, even when constructed out of fantasy; and so perhaps the fantastic kite--known for its interesting flight configurations--suckled the young Leonardo's latent inventive urges, or even symbolized their later expression.

Note: in this study first appears Freud's use of the term Eros, which he later makes such a fundamental part of his theory.

I'm a graduate student majoring art history. i'd read this essey at April at seminar on Freud i made. i wanna know the interpretation of art not by classical art historian but by psycho-analysis doctor. it's so curious and fantastic to meet this strange world. In that, Freud would explain on genius of Leonardo Da Vinci. 'Passion on completeness made him (Leonardo) left his works unfinished. So to speak, if he is unsatisfied with his, he left them unfinished. And He thought the reason of Leonardo disposition toward homosexual was on his infant period accident. He was fed by Only his mother without Father! to be Absent of Father. And his Oedipus Complex not happen like normal case. He depened on his mother without obstacle-his father. He identified himself with his mom. And when he grew up, he loved boys like him. He took the role of his mom which feed him! His Libido made his investigation on everythins stronger than normal ! So to speak, His primal desire(il primo motore)is changed not as hetero sexual desire but as investigation desire. Frequently, you'd think you meet dogmatic explanation on Leonardo. It's no bad because there are not 'ONLY' truth! ^^ And why dont you check your condition out according to Freudian way?