Freud's Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)

Sigmund Freud --the father of Psychoanalysis-- published a controversial monograph on Leonardo DaVinci's purported homosexuality. Because Freud admired Leonardo as a true Renaissance man --in the same league as Francis Bacon and Nicolas Copernicus -- he wanted to offer a plausible scientific explanation for Leonardo's sexual proclivities. His research lead him to the artist's traumatic childhood. Freud also explains why Leonardo was a great starter but a poor finisher. Much of Freud's conclusions depend on a fantasy that Leonardo recorded in his notebooks: ... while I was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips. From this Freud constructs a dubious edifice about Leonardo. The fact that Freud used a bad translation (vulture--a large scavenger bird-- instead of the more appropriate 'kite' which is a small bird) ruins his entire analysis. By repeating the myth that vultures reproduce without assistance from a male, Freud concludes that since "he had a mother but no father," Leonardo "was able to identify himself with the child Christ." Given the close relationship that Leonardo had with his mother, Freud even dares to translate the vulture fantasy as: "It was through this erotic relation with my mother that I became a homosexual." Today, we should consider this monograph --Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood-- as a curiosity that mars Freud's entire theory of psychoanalysis as speculation and weird interpretation. The writing techniques I use are explained in Mary Duffy's Toolbox for Writers e-book. Mary Duffy's Toolbox for Writers Augustine, City of God Austen J, Pride and Prejudice Austen J, "Marriage Proposals and Me" Austen J, Emma Borges, The Aleph C. Bronte, Jane Eyre Burroughs E,Tarzan Cervantes, Don Quijote Chaucer, Wife of Bath Coelho P,The Alchemist Coyle H, They Are Soldiers Dante, New Life Dickens C, David Copperfield Dostoevsky, Crime&Punishment ConanDoyle,Hound of Baskervilles Dubner S, Superfreakonomics DuMaurier D, Rebecca Ellis B. E. American Psycho Fitzgerald S, Great Gatsby Flaubert G, Madame Bovary Fleming I,Doctor No Freud S, Leonardo Da Vinci Friedan B, Feminine Mystique GarciaMarquez, Of Love & OtherDemons GarciaMarquez,OneHundredYrs Guerrero M,ThePoison Pill Grass G, The Tin Drum Harris T, Hannibal Rising Heidegger M,House of Being Ishiguro K, Remains of The Day Johnson S,Rasselas Kafka,Metamorphosis Kosinski J, The Painted Bird Lee H,To Kill a Mockingbird McBain Ed,Gutter and Grave Murakami H,Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Nabokov V, Lolita Meyer, S, Twilight Ortega,Dehumanization of Art Poe E A, Gordon Pym Prose F, Reading Like a Writer Rushdie S,Midnight Children Sabatini R, Scaramouche Spark M, Prime of Miss Brodie Stendhal, Red and Black Sterne L,Tristram Shandy Stevenson R, Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde Stoker B, Dracula Thackeray W,History of Pendennis Tolstoy L, Anna Karenina Trollope A, Autobiography Unamuno M, Tragic Sense of Life Voltaire, Candide Webb J, Fields of Fire Wharton E, The House of Mirth Woolf V, To The Lighhouse The secrets of 'no-doze' prose: Mary Duffy's Sentence Openers Image via Wikipedia Lindsey Vonn Back to main page

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