Freud's Leonardo: psychobiography and autobiography of genius.

In his creation of a psychobiography of one genius and the hidden autobiographic analysis of another, Freud exemplifies what he described in the study: "Kindly nature has given the artist the ability to express his most secret mental impulses, which are hidden even from himself, by means of the works that he creates" (p. 107).     

Reflections on Freud's reaction to the death of his mother

Freud's reaction to the death of his mother as he reported it in letters to Ernest Jones and Sandor Ferenczi is discussed. The sense of liberation and the absence of grief which he emphasized is given some analytic consideration. An attempt is then made to gain an understanding of Freud's somewhat cryptic remark that a change in the "values of life" in the "deeper layers" will have occurred following his mother's death. His discussion of these concepts in Civilization and Its Discontents, which was published just before her death, is utilized. The question is raised of whether the death of his mother may have been related to the change in Freud's view of the significance of the preoedipal mother which he presented in "Female Sexuality," the first paper he wrote after her death.     

Freud's letters as a historical source

This article introduces the project of a "concordance of letters to and by Freud". It should make the broadly scattered Freud-correspondence more accessible to the historian. (Since the death of Freud, almost 3200 letters written by him and nearly 1200 letters to him have been published.) At the same time principles of methodology are discussed which have to be observed in using letters as historical source material.     

A psychoanalytic understanding of the desire for knowledge as reflected in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood1

The author offers an understanding of the psychoanalytic notion of the desire for knowledge and the possibility of attaining it as it fi nds expression in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. This understanding has not been explicitly articulated by Freud but may be considered integral to psychoanal ysis' Weltanschauung as shaped by Freud's legacy. It emerges through an attempt to explain basic shifts, contradictions, inconsistencies and tensions that become apparent from a close reading of the text of Leonardo. Articulating this implicit understanding of knowledge provides the grounds for a stance on epistemology that is integral to psychoanalysis and relevant to contemporary psychoanalytic concerns on this topic. This epistemology focuses on the necessary involvement of passion, rather than detachment, in the search for knowledge and views the psychoanalytic aim of self‐knowledge as a derivative, and most immediate expression, of a broader and more basic human drive to know.     

The Talking Cure as Action: Freud's Theory of Ritual Revisited

Freud made creative use of late Victorian theories of ritual as empty modes of behavior, using the idea of "seemingly meaningless" ritual to offer a compelling comparison with obsessive behavior. However, analytic hours, with their repetitive frame and repetition of unconscious conflicts, have stronger links with rituals than Freud admitted. Recent theories highlight the extensive power of rituals to organize and instantiate models of effective action, especially in terms of the multifunctionality of language. These new theories of ritual offer in turn new tools for understanding the therapeutic action of analytic hours.     

Freud as Leonardo: Why the First Psychobiography Went Wrong

ABSTRACT The first genuine psychobiography, Sigmund Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910/1957b), presented several important guidelines for psychobiographical research Among them were the rejection both of pathography and of idealization, and the avoidance both of arguments built upon a single clue and of strong conclusions based upon inadequate data Though the guidelines are sound, Freud violated those guidelines in the very work where they first appeared Freud's methodological errors and his “obsession” with the Leonardo book are traced in part to his projective identification with Leonardo, incorporating aspects of his own sexual history and his anxieties about the future of the psychoanalytic movement     

The puzzle of Freud's puzzle analogy: Reviving a struggle with doubt and conviction in Freud's Moses and monotheism

In this paper the author points to a puzzle raised by Freud's contradictory use of an analogy of a jigsaw puzzle. She shows how, through the attempt to resolve this puzzle, meanings and implications of Freud's difficult struggle with his search for truth in Moses and monotheism come alive, both in Freud's writing and in the author herself. Central to this struggle is an encounter with the sources of doubt and conviction that ultimately allows one to embrace ideas experienced as true, although they are not demonstrable evidentially. The paper sheds light on the importance of Moses and monotheism as a theoretical text that reflects on developments in Freud's thinking on truth, and the possibility, dangers and inherent difficulties of grasping it.     

Going home: migration as enactment and symbol

Abstract :  The concepts of home and migration are briefly explored. Reference is made to the reflections of several writers on migration suggesting that migrants may experience alienation, even permanent melancholia. There is discussion of the need to mourn what has been lost and left behind, and of the challenge in analytic work with a migrant to relate to the pain of the individual's core self amid environmental and cultural losses. The paper outlines the history of an individual before her migration from Latin America to London, and tendency to idealize as a new arrival. The symbolization process is discussed and it is suggested that repetitive enactment in the analytic transference may have been needed for her internal reality of estrangement to be confirmed and differentiated from her culturally and socially isolated external life as a migrant. Only then could she mourn losses and symbolize her inner reality. It is suggested that through mourning and symbolization the significance of migration for the patient was worked with and transformed so that, following a second migration, an ordinary, good enough home could be made in a new place.