As I am planning to psychoanalyse the work of Annie Leibovitz, I thought it would be prudent to actually read either an article or a book on psychoanalysis and how it can be applied to an artist. It was with this in mind that I came across a book by Sigmund Freud of where he psychoanalysed Leonardo Da Vinci entitled A Memory of his Childhood.

In all honesty, if the book had been written by anybody else then I probably would have discarded it after the first couple of chapters! It seemed to be making fanciful and tenuous assumptions that were far fetched and clutching at straws. But I did bear in mind that I am not a psychologist and that Sigmund Freud knew a lot more about this than I do, so I did persevere and finish the book. Overall, I thought the way that Freud was able to read meaning into various paintings insightful and helpful, even though I struggle with some of the conclusions. I found the link between the Da Vinci’s description of a childhood memory of a vulture whipping its tail against his mouth being linked to him suckling from his mother in infancy rather far fetched. The basis for this conclusion is that Egyptian hieroglyphics depict the mother as a vulture and as Da Vinci was a well read man the assumption is made that at some point Da Vinci discovered this bit of knowledge and adapted it to a memory. Personally, I find this very tenuous, there are too many maybes, maybe he read a book about Egyptian hieroglyphics, maybe that book said what the symbol for the mother is.

But there are other areas that are insightful, for instance his lack of a sexual drive, Da Vinci was never married or sired any children, meant that the energy and drive that he had for knowledge came from the suppression of his sexuality as Freud asserts that Da Vinci was a homosexual. Also, there was the part where Freud also asserted that Da Vinci was ambivalent to God because he had no father figure in his early childhood, before the age of 5. Both of these assertions do make sense and I think have merit and so does show how psychoanalysis can work in art.

Overall though, it was worth reading and has provided me with an example of how psychoanalysis can be applied to an individual. It seems to be a combination between knowing the biography of the artist and then applying this to their work to see if any traits appear. With the case of Annie Leibovitz, its been asserted that family is important to her and in the photo book Annie Leibovitz: A photographer’s life shows a series of family photographs. This can lead to the interpretation that because Leibovitz had a nomadic childhood with her Father being in the army and moving to a different camp every couple of years, that the family forged close bonds because they had to rely heavily on each other, both emotionally and physically. So the process does have some merit, but it can lead to jumping to far reaching conclusions and the evidence does need to be substantial to carry merit.