![]() “Thus a person of this sort would, for example, pursue research with the same passionate devotion that another would give to his love, and he would be able to investigate instead of loving” (1910c: 77). Freud argues that, when infantile sexuality is repressed to an excessive degree, as was the case with Leonardo, the adult exchanges the sexual aim of the instinctual drives for a non-sexual one, through the operation of sublimation. He suggests that the energy which Leonardo put into his craving for knowledge sprang from the persistence in him of the curiosity about sexual matters which can be observed in young children, who want to know where babies come from their researches come to nothing because they are never satisfied. “Freud wonders how Leonardo’s passion for research originated, so powerful was it that it stifled the artist in both his emotional and his sexual life. Through the concept of sublimation Freud tried to explain Leonardo’s passion for knowledge, which he saw as a form of replacement for the artist’s repressed sexuality. The study, even though seen by many as controversial, enabled Freud to introduce a couple of significant psychoanalytic concepts: sublimation and narcissism. ![]() It was Sigmund Freud, who in 1910 attempted an insight into Leonardo’s early days with the use of his newly developed method of psychoanalysis. Many scholars have tried to determine the origins of Leonardo’s drive for continuous research, and one of the theories reaches as far back as Leonardo’s childhood. His instatiable craving for knowledge is as much as a mystery as the smile of his famous Mona Lisa. Generally considered the quintessential Renaissance Man, his input reached fields as various as painting, sculpture, architecture, music, mathematics, engineering, invention, anatomy, geology, cartography, botany and literature. On the 15th of April 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci (hence the name), Italy.
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