FREUD’S LEONARDO DA VINCI is a major key to the premises of Psychoanalytic Criticism practiced by Sigmund Freud. Freud is
interested in uncovering the
conscious by revealing the subconscious or the
unconscious. He points out that literature and other arts, like dreams and neurotic symptoms, consist of the imagined, or fantasied, fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or are socially unacceptable. In examining Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, his state of mind and personality, Freud highlights a conflict between the unconscious and the conscious beings of the individual. His study shows how some of the most intriguing questions relating to Leonardo da Vinci’s work can be keyed in and out through Psychoanalytic Criticism.
It can be said that the work of art is reflection of the conscious being and the things behind it are in the unconscious. The psychoanalytic critic tries to locate the lost causes responsible for the creation of the work of art. Here, it is essential to understand Freud’s premises and procedures for psychoanalysis. His major premises include the following :
1. That most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious.
2. That all human behaviour is motivated ultimately by libidinal or sexual energy.
3. That because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed.
From these, we can go into examining the relationship between ego (which stands for “reason and circumspection”), id (which stands for the “untamed passions”), and superego (which is “representative of all moral restrictions”); as well as their collective relationship to the conscious and the unconscious. In the biography, Leonardo da Vinci, Freud analyses Da Vinci’s works, his character, intentions, desires, behaviour etc. in terms of “sexuality”, or libidinal investments that get translated into socially acceptable activities.
Freud offers a model for the sexual growth of a child in three phases --- oral, anal, and physical. In all these phases he sees an essential opposition between what he calls the ‘pleasure principle’ (or the pleasure of the senses) as opposed to the ‘reality principle’ (which can be accommodated in the social space). The acceptance of the state of suspension of pleasure gets worked out through substitution of pleasure activities. As Freud says, “The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.” The child at play imagines a correspondence between the world of pleasure and the world of reality, which is similar in case of creative artists like Leonardo da Vinci. The links between the two world is provided through different compensatory devices. According to Freud, Leonardo da Vinci compensates by remembering only a reconstructed version of happenings in childhood, as is reflected in his dreams (like the vulture phantasy) or paintings.
The way Freud solves the “riddle of Leonardo’s character” in Leonardo da Vinci, can be seen in relation to the four hypotheses of Psychoanalytic Criticism :
1) The first hypothesis is that sexuality is the constitutive factor in the construction of the subject : In Freudian psychology, at the centre of consciousness (which also accommodates the unconscious and the subconscious) is the libido, that is represented as libidinal investment. Libido refers not only to sexual instinct, but also to a vast and complex network of drives and energies.
The ways through which libidinal investment can be translated are : condensation, displacement, and symbolism. Importantly, Freud shows that the artist’s creative activities are manipulations of libidinal investments.
2) The second hypothesis states that the work of art is analogous to phantasy : Freud argues that Leonardo da Vinci’s vulture phantasy stresses the intensity of the erotic relations between mother and child. Freud says that it was Leonardo da Vinci’s mother who possessed the mysterious smile that he found again in the Florentine lady Mona Lisa,and from then on the captivating smile reappears in most of his pictures : it is given to Leda, to John the Baptist, to Bacchus, and so on.
3) The third hypothesis specifies that the purpose of the work of art is analogous to that of a dream, thus leading to the secret gratification of an infantile and forbidden wish.
4) The fourth hypothesis suggests that the psychoanalytic critic aims at the network of relations between desire and figuration, through the analysis of tropes : In Leonardo da Vinci’s case, sexual repression is sublimated into curiosity, and research becomes substitute to sexual activity, for an artist as well as for a scientific investigator.
Thus taking the instance of Leonardo da Vinci, Freud shows that there does exist a large and considerable part of the psyche which is not under the direct control of the individual. Also, a huge part of what we assume one has apparently forgotten is in fact stored, and that finds expression through various mediums. It is seen in the biography how the analyses of the work of an artist, dreams, phantasies, even certain personality traits and behaviour patterns can bring forth the association between the conscious and the unconscious, thus leading to an understanding of the individual psyche. Moreover, Freud’s theories concerning child psychology are explored in his book Leonardo da Vinci, that deals largely with the subject’s memory (which is a filtering mechanism that distorts and reconstructs what is to be remembered) of childhood. Although the biography is based upon controversial research, it offers a fascinating insight into the character and work of Leonardo da Vinci.