Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile ReminiscenceFreud, Sigmund
Science
Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile Reminiscence
Freud, Sigmund
Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 -- Views on art; Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519; Painters -- Italy -- Biography; Psychoanalysis -- Case studies
Deeper psychological discussions justify the assertion that the person
who becomes homosexual in this manner remains fixed in his unconscious
on the memory picture or his mother, By repressing the love for his
mother he conserves the same in his unconscious and henceforth remains
faithful to her. When as a lover he seems to pursue boys, he really thus
runs away from women who could cause him to become faithless to his
mother. Through direct observation of individual cases we could
demonstrate that he who is seemingly receptive only of masculine stimuli
is in reality influenced by the charms emanating from women just like a
normal person, but each and every time he hastens to transfer the
stimulus he received from the woman to a male object and in this manner
he repeats again and again the mechanism through which he acquired his
homosexuality.
It is far from us to exaggerate the importance of these explanations
concerning the psychic genesis of homosexuality. It is quite clear that
they are in crass opposition to the official theories of the homosexual
spokesmen, but we are aware that these explanations are not sufficiently
comprehensive to render possible a final explanation of the problem.
What one calls homosexual for practical purposes may have its origin in
a variety of psychosexual inhibiting processes, and the process
recognized by us is perhaps only one among many, and has reference only
to one type of "homosexuality." We must also admit, that the number of
cases in our homosexual type which shows the conditions required by us,
exceeds by far those cases in which the resulting effect really appears,
so that even we cannot reject the supposed coöperation of unknown
constitutional factors from which one was otherwise wont to deduce the
whole of homosexuality. As a matter of fact there would be no occasion
for entering into the psychic genesis of the form of homosexuality
studied by us if there were not a strong presumption that Leonardo, from
whose vulture-phantasy we started, really belonged to this one type of
homosexuality.
As little as is known concerning the sexual behavior of the great artist
and investigator, we must still trust to the probability that the
testimonies of his contemporaries did not go far astray. In the light of
this tradition he appears to us as a man whose sexual need and activity
were extraordinarily low, as if a higher striving had raised him above
the common animal need of mankind. It may be open to doubt whether he
ever sought direct sexual gratification, and in what manner, or whether
he could dispense with it altogether. We are justified, however, to look
also in him for those emotional streams which imperatively force others
to the sexual act, for we cannot imagine a human psychic life in whose
development the sexual desire in the broadest sense, the libido, has not
had its share, whether the latter has withdrawn itself far from the
original aim or whether it was detained from being put into execution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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