John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 2:25

Research Article AJPRR (2020) 3:25

American Journal of Psychiatric Research and Reviews (ISSN:2637-479X)

Salvador Dali Meets Sigmund Freud: Paranoia, Narcissism, Snails

John J. Hartman, Ph.D.

Affiliate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, University of South Florida.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the meeting between the artist Salvador *Correspondence to Author: Dalí and Sigmund Freud that took place in London in July of John J. Hartman, Ph.D. 1938. Freud had just escaped from the Nazi regime in Austria Affiliate Professor, Department and was about a year away from death. Dalí had been influenced of Psychiatry and Behavioral by Freud’s work for many years and had sought to meet his idol Neurosciences, University of South on several previous occasions. The meeting, arranged by Freud’s Florida. friend, Stefan Zweig, and attended by the poet, Edward James, is noteworthy in that Dalí brought his painting, “Metamorphosis of Narcissus,” a treatise on the subject of paranoia, and sketched How to cite this article: Freud’s head conceived as a snail. The paper offers perspectives John J. Hartman. Salvador Dali on each of these events. The meeting is seen in the context of Meets Sigmund Freud: Paranoia, Freud’s artistic sensibility and his relationship to Surrealism. For Narcissism, Snails. American Jour- Dalí the meeting served as a way to break with Surrealism and nal of Psychiatric Research and led to a revised philosophy of art. The paper concludes with the Reviews, 2020; 3:25 speculation that the meeting was experienced by the artist as an idealizing/envious narcissistic transference with Freud, thus replicating the theme of the painting that the artist had brought with him.

Keywords: Breton; Dali; Death instinct; Envy; Sigmund Freud; eSciPub LLC, Houston, TX USA. Lacan; Mirror phase; Mirror transference; Narcissism; Paranoia; Website: https://escipub.com/ Surrealism

AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 1 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 Salvador Dali Meets Sigmund Freud: Para- become familiar with Freud’s work, particularly noia, Narcissism, Snails1 The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900; Da- On July 19,1938, the artist Salvador Dali met vis, 1973). Originally an adherent to Dadaism, with Sigmund Freud at the latter’s temporary Breton based Surrealism on the Freudian un- home at 39 Elsworthy Road in Primrose Hill in conscious in a radical critique of a society that London. Freud had been suffering with intra-oral suppresses and represses mankind’s irrational cancer for 16 years and had escaped the Nazi nature. Two principles of Surrealism, symbolism regime’s house arrest with his family in Vienna and automatism, owe a good deal to Freud’s un- only the month before. The meeting caused derstanding of dreams and to their interpretation Freud to favorably alter his opinion of Surrealism (Ades, 1974). Automatic writing as employed by and revealed an important aspect of his artistic Surrealists was thought to be analogous to the sensibility. Dali was becoming well known and free association method of understanding successful. The meeting with Freud provided dreams. As Freud’s work was translated into him with an opportunity to assert his independ- French, Surrealism grew as an artistic and polit- ence from the Surrealist movement and to chart ical movement in the 1920’s (Jeffett, 2010; Lo- an independent philosophical and artistic mas, 2000). course. Dali brought his painting Metamorphosis Although Surrealism and psychoanalysis can be of Narcissus (1937) and an accompanying poem seen to have commonalities (Esman, 2011), by the same title. He also brought a copy of his Freud did not have much interest in nor respect 1933 treatise on paranoia published in the Sur- for the Surrealists. Though he likely did not un- realist magazine, Minotaure, to discuss. The art- derstand it very well, it is also known that he did ist spent most of the meeting sketching Freud not have much tolerance for modern art (Rose, and later turned the sketches into a lithograph, 1983). In a letter he wrote to Breton on Decem- Portrait of Sigmund Freud (1938). The purpose ber 26, 1932, he expressed the following: of this paper is to describe the meeting from the And now a confession which you must accept accounts of the participants and to assess the with tolerance! Although I receive so much evi- significance of the meeting for Dali and for Freud dence of the interest which you and your friends in terms of their respective aesthetic philoso- show toward my research, for myself I am not in phies. Therefore, the meeting will be discussed the position to explain what Surrealism is and in detail to analyze how the different elements of what it is after. It could be that I am not in any it reveal the enormity of Freud’s influence on way made to understand it, I am at such a distant Dali’s life and art. The article proposes a specu- position from art (quoted in Davis, 1973, p.131). lative analysis of the meeting as a complex per- Breton was hurt and disappointed by Freud’s re- sonal emotional experience for the artist. Before sponses to him, including a visit to Vienna that moving to an analysis of the meeting, I will first did not go well. Their correspondence reveals briefly discuss Freud’s influence on the Surreal- some of their conversations about Breton’s criti- ism movement. cisms of Freud in his 1932 Les vases communi- Freud and Surrealism cants [Communicating Vessels] (Davis, 1973). Freud was a major influence on the Surrealist Freud’s communications with Breton are rele- Movement that flourished between the world vant to the context for his later meeting with Sal- wars (Ades, 1974; Davis, 1973; Esman, 2011; vador Dali. By 1938, Dali had become a leading Kaplan, 1989; Rose, 1983). Its founder, André Surrealist but was having his own misgivings Breton, had worked as a psychiatric aid in a mil- about the Surrealist movement and André Bre- itary hospital during World War I and had ton. Dali and Breton were difficult personalities

1 I would like to thank the staff of the Salvador Dali Mu- preparation of this manuscript, especially Shaina Buck- seum in St. Petersburg, Florida for Assistance in the les. AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 2 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 and often rubbed each other the wrong way. the Nazis, he contacted a mutual acquaintance, Moreover, Dali did not share many of Breton’s Stefan Zweig, to try to arrange a meeting in Lon- political opinions, particularly his support for the don.2 At the time, Freud was settling into his French Communist Party. Dali also was looking temporary quarters in London, ill and adjusting for his own artistic philosophy and was begin- to his exile from Vienna. He was not at all in- ning to find Surrealism confining (Finkelstein, clined to receive visitors under these circum- 1996; Gibson, 1997). This is the larger setting stances (Edmundson, 2007). Zweig wrote him within which Dali set out to meet Freud. three impassioned notes to try to convince him Freud and Dali: The meeting in detail to meet with Dali. He reminds Freud that his en- Arranging the meeting thusiasm for introducing him to Dali is an excep- The meeting between Dali and Freud only oc- tion because of his belief in the artist’s genius. curred after three previous failed attempts by the He forewarns Freud that his works may seem artist. He expressed his frustration with travelling strange, and also points out how they were influ- three times to Vienna for the same purpose, do- enced by Freud’s thought. He says, “For years it ing the same things: has been the desire of this real genius to meet My three voyages to Vienna were exactly like you. He says that he owes to you more in his art three drops of water which lacked the reflections than to anybody else” (E. Freud, 1961, pp. 233). to make them glitter... In the morning I went to He added that the artist would like to make a por- see the Vermeer in the Czernin Collection, and trait sketch of Freud at the meeting. The plan in the afternoon, I did not go to visit Freud be- was to bring a gramophone to play a recording cause I invariably learned he was out of town for of a “paranoid-critical” poem by Dali that was reasons of health. I remember with a gentle mel- meant to accompany the viewing of the painting, ancholy spending those afternoons walking hap- but this did not seem to have happened. At the hazardly along the streets of Austria’s ancient last minute, Dali’s wife of four years, Gala, did capital. The chocolate tart, which I would hur- not attend the meeting and Edward James came riedly eat between short intervals of going from in her place.3 Zweig told Freud that James was one antiquary to another, had a slightly bitter interested in an analysis with him as well as in taste resulting from the antiquities I saw and ac- writing his biography. Freud finally relented, and centuated by the mockery of the meeting which the meeting was set. never took place. In the evening I held long and The Meeting exhaustive imaginary conversations with Freud; There have been several accounts of the Dali- he even came home with me once and stayed Freud meeting in the psychoanalytic and psychi- all night clinging to the curtains of my room in the atric literatures (Brok, 2006; Harris, 2005; Romm Hotel Sacher (Dali, 1942, p. 23). and Slap, 1983; Rose, 1983). This section ex- Not meeting with Freud seems to have left Dali plores some of the details and the implications feeling not just disappointed but bitter and of the meeting in depth, emphasizing its impact mocked. After learning of Freud’s escape from on Dali’s artistic philosophy and the direction of

2 Born in Vienna, Stefan Zweig was a Jewish novelist, 3 British poet, sculptor and passionate patron of the arts, playwright, journalist, and biographer who anticipated the Edward James was only 30 at the time of the meeting. consequences of Nazism and settled in London in 1934. Promoter of the Surrealist movement, he sponsored Dali He became a popular writer between the world wars and and the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. James was the credited Freud and psychoanalysis with a positive influ- first owner of Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Married and ence on his life and his writing. His correspondence with divorced, James was thought to be bi-sexual and possi- Freud offers the most reliable account of the meeting bly in love with Dali (Gibson, 1997). with Dali. AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 3 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 his artistic career. The meeting also provides a fanatical eyes and his undeniable technical mas- glimpse into Freud’s aesthetics as well as the tery, has made me reconsider my opinion. It basis for his psychoanalytic approach to art. would in fact be very interesting to investigate At the time of the meeting, Freud had only re- analytically how a picture like this came to be cently come to London, having been rescued painted. From the critical point of view it could from house arrest by the Nazis through the ef- still be maintained that the notion of art defies forts of Marie Bonaparte, Ernest Jones, William expansion as long as the quantitative portion of Bullitt, and others including several governments unconscious material and pre-conscious treat- (Edmundson, 2007; Schur, 1972). He was finish- ment does not remain within definite limits” (E. ing An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940[1938]) Freud, 1961, pp. 448-449). and his controversial Moses and Monotheism Freud saw in Dali’s work confirmation of some of (1939 [1934-1938]). He was also feeling the ef- his own ideas; he had always looked to artists fects of his 16-year battle with carcinoma of the and writers for independent corroboration for his palate that necessitated dozens of surgeries. discoveries gathered from clinical work with pa- The cancer was undoubtedly caused by his tients. As for Dali, the aim was rather different. twenty-cigars-a-day habit that hardly abated dur- His effort was to portray his unconscious delib- ing his illness. He was often in a good deal of erately in his art with the added aims of celebrat- pain and had trouble speaking because of diffi- ing psychosexual regression and perversion and culties with a prosthesis he wore to replace sur- privileging the pleasure principle over the reality gically-removed sections of his palate and jaw. principle (Finkelstein, 1996). Freud had always He also suffered from a degree of hearing loss privileged the voice of reason over the pleasure in his right ear due to the procedures (Romm, principle. 1983). Implications for Freud The meeting with Dali was a diversion for Freud, Because Freud saw poets, fiction writers, and welcome or not. He spoke mainly with James artists as having a special insight into the uncon- with occasional asides to Zweig. He did not scious and looked to their work for confirmation speak directly with Dali although he could have of his own “scientific” findings from his work with done so in French. Dali sketched him for most of patients in psychoanalysis, the meeting with Dali the meeting. Toward the end of the meeting Dali might have provided this opportunity. However, became more insistent that Freud take and read in this case it provided an opportunity to clarify his article on paranoia that appeared in the first his own view of aesthetics even if they represent issue in Minotaure. As Dali became more and one of his only positive opinions about modern more animated, Freud declared to James: “That art (Gombrich, 1966; Spector, 1974). In his pa- boy looks like a fanatic. Small wonder they have per, “Creative Writers and Day-dreaming” civil war in Spain if they look like that” (quoted in (1908), for example, Freud expressed his view Gibson, 1997, p, 24). Dali took this remark as a of aesthetics in this way: supreme compliment. The writer softens the character of his egoistic The meeting is also noteworthy for Freud’s com- day-dreams by altering it and disguising it, and mentary on the painting Metamorphosis of Nar- he bribes us by the purely formal – that is, aes- cissus (1937). The following day Freud wrote a thetic – yield of pleasure which he offers us in letter to Zweig in which he expresses admiration the presentation of his phantasies. We give the for the artist and allowed that he had changed name of an incentive bonus, or a fore-pleasure, his mind about his previous negative opinion of to a yield of pleasure, such as this, which is of- the Surrealists. Acknowledging that they see him fered to us as to make possible the release of as a sort of “patron saint,” he recants his earlier still greater pleasure arising from deeper psychi- opinion that they were “cranks” and says of Dali, cal sources. In my opinion, all the aesthetic “The young Spaniard, however with his candid, pleasure which a creative writer affords us has AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 4 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 the character of a fore-pleasure of this kind, and In his monograph on Freud’s aesthetic philoso- our actual enjoyment of an imaginative work pro- phy, art historian Jack J. Spector (1974) also ceeds from a liberation of tension in our minds took up Freud’s letter to Zweig arguing that (p.153). Freud’s formula regarding the balance of uncon- This model would fit the artist as well as the cre- scious, preconscious and conscious elaboration ative writer and is consistent with Freud’s more was akin to Gustave Fechner’s “scientific” aes- succinct statement to Zweig about Dali’s work. thetics. Fechner (1801-1887) was one of the Freud reiterated his view of creative art in his “An founders of experimental psychology and psy- Autobiographical Study” (1925) where he em- chophysics in particular. However, his interest in phasized that the technical methods that the art- aesthetics seems to have influenced Freud’s ist employed were like the dream-work and reit- views on art. Freud in fact quotes Fechner’s erated the role of fore-pleasure in the emotional “principle of aesthetic assistance” (p. 135) as the appeal of art. basis of his own speculations about the pleasure Art historian Ernst Gombrich (1966) asserts that derived from jokes. Freud’s idea of balance of Freud’s few words on Dali represent his “most conscious and unconscious forces, Spector revealing utterance” on his attitude toward art. sees as a blend of Freud’s neoclassic tastes with Here he is referring both to Freud’s appraisal of its emphasis on order and ‘beauty’ and romanti- Dali’s “technical mastery” as well as to the idea cism’s emphasis on originality and free expres- of a proper proportion between unconscious ma- sion. Spector goes on to argue that Freud’s aes- terial and preconscious elaboration being kept thetic was like his view of the psychic apparatus within certain limits. Before seeing Dali’s work, with the ego in charge, regulating compromise Freud had asserted that both Expressionism and and moderation. Unlike Gombrich, Spector Surrealism violated these proportions and doubted whether Freud’s psychological formula should be considered “non-art.” Gombrich goes made much of a contribution to a general theory on to argue that Freud’s theory of successful art of aesthetics beyond his own personal tastes was based on the model he set forth in his book and biases (pp. 143-145). on jokes and that he used the same model to Implications for Dali evaluate art (Freud, 1905). 4 Gombrich con- Meeting Freud was one of the highlights of Sal- cludes that Freud saw no artistic value in the pri- vador Dali’s life. The artist used Freud’s positive mary process as such. The value of art, to him, reaction to his painting and his impression of him lay in the mastery of the medium as well as its as a fanatic to further his artistic agenda as well eventual adjustment to reality. The code gener- as his personal mythology. Dali had won a kind ates the message of art and allows for the re- of competition with Breton whose own meeting lease of pleasure in the form of “fore-pleasure.” with Freud had not gone so well. Further Dali Art succeeds to the extent that the artist can con- used Freud’s remarks about his painting to indi- trol the primary process through “regression in cate that Surrealism’s agenda had hit a dead the service of the ego” (Kris, 1952) as well as end. In his 1942 autobiography Dali described sublimation. Freud was uncertain whether Dali’s his visit to Freud as having shown him how the painting fulfilled the criteria of his aesthetic and latter’s death would signal the end of an old Eu- came to no final conclusion. rope. He repeats the words Freud said to him,

4 In this work Freud asserted that the pleasure derived by virtue of a creative form that allows the usually unac- from a successful joke was based on its form and less so ceptable thought to become temporarily acceptable. A on its unconscious primary process content. As in puns, new structure is created that leads to pleasure and the pleasure derived from a joke comes from the fact that laughter. an unconscious impulse is allowed into consciousness AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 5 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 declaring: “He said to me, ‘In classic paintings I The irony in this turnabout is that while Dali look for the sub-conscious – in a surrealist paint- seems to have taken quite seriously Freud’s ing, for the conscious.’ This was the pronounce- words about sublimation and the proper balance ment of a death sentence on surrealism as a between conscious and unconscious in art, the doctrine, as a sect, as an ‘ism’” (Dali, 1942, p. artist turned away from Freud and psychoanaly- 397). The artist therefore used Freud’s consider- sis to Einstein, Heisenberg, and nuclear physics able authority to help complete his break with the for the inspiration for his new aesthetic (Ades Surrealist agenda, philosophy, and movement and Taylor, 2005). For both Dali and Freud the (Finkelstein, 1996). Dali was determined to be- meeting seems to have had a significant effect come “classical” emulating his artist heroes from on their views of art but in vastly different ways the past like Raphael, Velasquez, and Da Vinci and for very different reasons. Within the larger (Finkelstein, 1996; Lomas, 2006). context of the meeting, three important elements He also seemed to take quite seriously some emerge, to which I turn now: the paranoia article, casual remarks about sublimation that Freud the Narcissus painting, and the sketches of made to James during the meeting. Apparently, Freud’s head as a snail. Freud referred to this concept several times in Paranoia the context of discussing Moses. Whether Freud Dali came to this long-anticipated meeting with was talking about Moses the man or whether he Freud a copy of the first issue of the Surrealist was referring to Michelangelo’s sculpture of Mo- journal Minotaure in which his article on para- ses (Freud, 1914a) is not clear. In any case Dali noia appeared (Dali, 1933) back-to-back with came away from the meeting determined to give another by the young psychiatrist, Jacques La- up his quest for the pleasures of psychosexual can (Lacan, 1933). He wished to discuss para- regression in his future aesthetic. At the conclu- noia with Freud much as he had with Lacan sev- sion of his autobiography he writes: eral years before (Constantinidou, 2005; Dali, At the moment [the meeting] Freud was occupy- 1942; Gibson, 1997). ing himself mainly with “religious phenomenon Dali’s article, “Paranoiac-Critical Interpretation and Moses.” And I remember with what fervor he of the Obsessive Image of ‘Millet’s Angelus,’” uttered the word “sublimation” on several occa- (Dali, 1933) was intended as an introduction to a sions. “Moses is flesh of sublimation.” The indi- monograph on Dali’s interpretation of the fa- vidual sciences of our epoch have become spe- mous Angelus painting and a full demonstration cialized in these three eternal vital constants – of his paranoid-critical method of arriving at such the sexual instinct, the sense of death, and the interpretations. He wrote this book in the 1930’s space- time anguish. After their analysis, after but lost it during World War II. It was found after the experimental speculation, it becomes neces- the war and published in 1963 (Dali, 1963). The sary to sublimate them. The sexual instinct must monograph sought to explain the popularity of be sublimated in esthetics; the sense of death in Millet’s painting throughout Europe. Using the love; and the space-time anguish in metaphysics paranoid-critical method, Dali sought to provide and religion (Dali, 1942, p. 398). evidence that the underlying meaning of the de- As Finkelstein (1996) documents in great detail, piction of pious peasants at prayer at dusk in- the Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) and the volved latent predatory sexual themes as well as meeting with Freud marked a turning point in the mourning of the couple’s child. Dali modeled Dali’s work and aesthetic philosophy. Dali’s ar- his book after Freud’s paper on Leonardo da tistic work during World War II and after did re- Vinci (Finkelstein, 1996; Freud, 1910) and his flect this turn away from Freudian-inspired Sur- methodology was meant to be an analogy to realism and resulted in what the artist eventually Freud’s free association method, but was very called Nuclear Mysticism (Ades and Taylor, different from it at the same time (Finkelstein, 2005). 1996; Lomas, 2006). AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 6 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 In this article, Dali asserts that the purpose of the further his views on paranoia (Ades and Taylor, paranoid-critical method is no less than the “total 2005). He argued that her idea that the writer discrediting of the world of reality.” The work it- Eugenio d’Ors was communicating his love for self states that it was written from the point of her through newspaper articles that she saw as view of Surrealism, but it also subtly undermines secret communications, gathering coincidences, of the concept of automatism that was the main- plays on words, and other messages to create stay of Surrealist methodology as promoted by an elaborate system of belief that to Dali consti- Breton (Finkelstein, 1996). It is also important to tuted a “systematic interpretive structure” (Dali, note that Dali and Lacan (1933) apparently were 1942; Finkelstein, 1996; Gibson, 1997). in agreement that the psychiatric view of para- Had Freud and Dali discussed the artist’s paper noia was in need of revision. The artist cited La- on paranoia they would have found many disa- can’s medical dissertation, “On Paranoiac Psy- greements. Dali’s agenda was to completely chosis and its Relations with the Personality” discredit the world of reality and to privilege the (Lacan, 1932) as a “perfect account” of the par- pleasure principle over the reality principle. anoid phenomenon. French psychiatry at that While Dali was visiting Freud as a ‘faithful’ and time regarded paranoia as due to a paranoid ‘grateful’ disciple, his artistic and philosophical constitution. Lacan’s dissertation disputed that agenda radically undermined some of the basic claim and offered several case studies as evi- foundations of Freud’s work. The Surrealists, dence. and Dali in particular, had little use for psychoa- Dali promised to demonstrate in his monograph nalysis as a treatment. Their goal was to har- that the paranoid individual --or anyone who ness the unconscious for art and to promote the could induce a paranoid delirious state--was in pleasure principle to undermine a corrupt and re- possession of a potentially revealing view of the pressive society that was depriving mankind of world. This “paranoia” could be applied to vari- its true nature (Finkelstein, 1996). Dali’s ostensi- ous aspects of life, including art, to great ad- ble reason for not entering psychoanalytic treat- vantage. All that was needed was “a systemiza- ment was that it might harm his art (Gibson, tion in the delirious content.” He also knew well 1997). Had Dali explained the methodology of Freud’s work on paranoia and its link to re- his paranoid-criticism with its emphasis on coin- pressed unconscious homosexuality (Freud, cidence, chance, arbitrary symbolism, and the 1911), including his paper on Leonardo da Vinci like, Freud would certainly have been confirmed that speculated about how repressed homosex- in his negative opinion of the Surrealists. uality played a crucial role in the Renaissance Dali’s insistence that Freud read his paranoia artist’s life (Freud, 1910). Freud’s repressed ho- treatise may have been based on the artist’s mosexual theory of paranoia is not mentioned, feeling that he had made a significant contribu- however, in any of Dali’s writings about para- tion to the understanding of paranoia building on noia. Gibson (1997) attributes this to Dali’s disa- Freud’s conceptualization in the Schreber paper vowal of his own homosexual conflicts. (Freud, 1911). Lacan and Dali found that they Dali used his own life to develop his work on par- shared many of the same views on paranoia, anoia; he was no stranger to paranoia, and was and Dali may have been hoping for a similar wel- fearful that he was afflicted with it. His grandfa- come from Freud. Freud had written about the ther, Gal Josep Salvador Dali, was thought to role of the unconscious in perception and its rep- have suffered from paranoia and killed himself resentation in paranoia. Dali had a similar inter- by jumping off the roof of a building at age 36. est in perception and representation in his art. Dali attributed his own psychological symptoms This might have been a fertile common area of as a young man to paranoia (Gibson,1997). In interest outside of Dali’s more radical critique of addition, Dali used his observations of a woman social “reality.” he’d known since childhood, Lidia Sabá, to Another area of common interest that they might AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 7 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 have discussed was interpretation and paranoid Second Fisherman – If you really want to thought. Dali had asserted in his 1933 paper that know (lowering his paranoid ideation did not need to be interpreted voice) he has a bulb in his head. as it was already an interpretation of reality. ‘A bulb in the head’, in Catalan, corresponds Freud had alluded to such an idea in the exactly with the Schreber paper and Lacan had argued this point psycho-analytic notion of a ‘complex’. in his dissertation (1932). Constantinidou (2005) If a man has a bulb in his head, it might break has argued that Lacan and Dali picked up where into flower at Freud had left off and that the subject of a para- any moment, Narcissus! (Dali, 1937). noid interpretation of reality presaged issues rel- These lines plausibly suggest that the painting is evant to structural linguistics. Dali, however, had autobiographical-- that the figure of Narcissus to be content with the fact that Freud considered represents the artist and his narcissism (Ades him to be a fanatic and not necessarily a contrib- and Taylor, 2005; Finkelstein, 1996; Gibson, utor to his psychoanalytic science. 1997; and Lomas, 1999, 2000). Lomas (1999, Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) 2000) has gone so far as to conclude that the While Freud wrote to Zweig that it would useful poem and painting represent an account of to explore psychoanalytically how Dali’s painting Dali’s self-analysis and self-cure. came to be created, no psychoanalyst has yet The painting is thought to be constructed, as attempted to do so. However, there have been many of Dali’s works, in the manner of a film several excellent analyses of this painting by art (Jeffett, 2010). The painting depicts movement historians who have informed themselves from the top to the bottom like the melting snow deeply about Freudian psychoanalysis and its to the pool at the bottom of the painting. The effect on Dali’s art (Ades, and Taylor, 2005; theme of transformation is illustrated as snow is Finkelstein, 1996; Gibson, 1997; Jeffett, 2010; transformed into water, winter is transformed Lomas, 1999, 2000). Dali has written that the into spring, and Narcissus is transformed into a discovery of Freud’s work, especially The Inter- flower. Following the poem, the narrative of the pretation of Dreams (1900) while he was in art painting begins in the upper left working down- school was one of the most important influences ward to the Narcissus figure in the left fore- on his art and his personal life (Dali, 1942). ground. Then attention shifts from the Narcissus Dali intended the poem and the painting to be figure to the double image of the hand holding presented together. The painting was produced an egg out of which springs a narcissus flower. to illustrate the poem. The theme may have When the painting and poem were first displayed been suggested by the 1931 publication of in a gallery, Dali Ovid’s Des Métamorphoses edited by Albert provided a set of instructions about how the Skira, the editor of the Minotaure (Gibson, painting was to be viewed. The artist recom- 1997). Dali began the painting after a trip to the mended that the viewer gaze at the painting with Austrian Alps with James and Gala at a time “distracted fixity” (quoted in Lomas, 2000, p. when snow was melting in the valleys and the 174) at which point the image of Narcissus narcissi were beginning to bloom. The art histo- merges with surrounding rocks and disappears. rians agree that the poem offers the painting The viewer’s attention is then drawn to the dou- greater meaning (see especially Finkelstein, bled image of the hand holding the narcissus 1996 and Lomas, 2010). The prologue, for ex- egg. Lomas believes that Dali’s intent was to in- ample, reads: duce in the viewer a replica of the experience of First Port-Lligat Fisherman -- What’s wrong Narcissus in both believing in an illusion and los- with that chap, ing his sense of self. In this way, the viewer is Glaring at himself all day in his looking meant to have a “narcissistic experience” (Lo- glass? mas, 2000, p. 174). AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 8 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 The painting “begins” with the “god of the snow” When the head slits “melting with desire,” “annihilating himself loudly When that head splits among the excremental cries of minerals.” The When that head bursts mountainous background may have been in- It will be the flower, spired by the trip to the Austrian Alps, but the The new narcissus, landscape is reminiscent of Cape Creus near Gala – my narcissus. (Dali, 1937). Dali’s home and the spot where he first wooed These lines make it clear once again that the his wife. Below the snow god is a statue of a painting and poem are an autobiographical ac- youth on a red pedestal. In the center back- count of the artist’s own metamorphoses in both ground is “the heterosexual group” comprised of his artistic and personal life. men and women of various ethnicities. The One element that appears in the painting and not poem makes it clear that Narcissus is isolated the poem is the greyhound eating a piece of raw from this group. It may be that the youth on the meat that appears in the lower right foreground. pedestal was meant to represent Narcissus’ This element was added to the painting later and youthful homosexuality, and that the mature its meaning is not clear. Dali wrote to James Narcissus distances himself from both the youth about the addition of the dog but did not explain and the heterosexual group. The art historians its significance. have speculated that the heterosexual group Art historians agree that the painting and poem was meant to portray the many suitors of Narcis- represent a wishful personal mythological narra- sus in the myth who were spurned by the solitary tive of Dali’s life before and after he met his wife, youth in love with his own image (Finkelstein, Gala. Dali’s analysis of his life can be summa- 1996; Lomas, 1999, 2000). rized as a young man beset by conflicts around The figure of Narcissus in the painting is naked sexuality, which led him to avoid the intimacy of with his head on his knee gazing into the reflec- both men and women to the point of being de- tive water of a still pond. Gibson (1997) charac- pressed and symptomatic. Masturbation was an terizes the youth as portraying shame with his outlet but it made him ashamed and hopeless. head bowed and partially hidden. This is con- After meeting Gala he was transformed from sistent with Gibson’s view of Dali as full of narcissism and homosexuality to object love. shame. In the original myth Narcissus was con- The painting depicts a personal transformation templating suicide. As mentioned the image of that changed the course of the artist’s life. Narcissus can be viewed as merging into the Finkelstein (1996) argues that in addition to the surrounding rocks and disappearing. In the personal transformation that Dali’s painting al- poem Dali writes: ludes to, there is also a transformation in his aes- Narcissus annihilates himself in the cosmic thetic philosophy. Dali sought to become “classi- vertigo cal.” He argues that this painting allows Dali to In the deepest depths of which signal a move away from valorizing regression Sings in the form of polymorphous perverse sexuality The cold and dionysiac siren of his own im- to a new aesthetic that might ensure his immor- age. tality in art. In this endeavor, Gala was to con- The body of Narcissus flows out and is lost tinue to play a crucial role. In Finkelstein’s view In the abyss of his reflection (Dali, 1937). “Gala constantly guards Dali from excessively The image’s double is the hand which appears giving in to these regressive tendencies or helps to be fossilized, crawling with ants, and holding him to harness them. It might, however, also im- an egg out which emerges a narcissus flower. ply his perception of an overall change of direc- Dali writes of the hand that it is “insensate,” “ter- tion [in] his theoretical stance vis-á-vis Surreal- rible,” excrement-eating,” and “mortal.” The ism, as well as one affecting his whole creative poem concludes: activity, which … will lead to a new aesthetic AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 9 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 stance” (p. 234). Indeed, after the meeting with that the painting is about death and rebirth and Freud Dali broke with Surrealism and eventually the argument that the ideas behind it were influ- began to paint under his new “classic” Nuclear enced by Freud’s death instinct concept seem Mysticism philosophy (Ades and Taylor, 2005). plausible. It is also agreed upon by art historians that the Death was on his mind when Dali painted his painting and poem were produced with Freud’s Narcissus painting. His close friend, René work on narcissism very much in mind. Dali was Crevel, had committed suicide in 1935. A com- familiar with the psychoanalyst’s papers on Leo- munist, Crevel had joined the Surrealist move- nardo (1910) and on narcissism (1914b). Lomas ment only to be expelled from it for his homosex- (2000), for example, points out that Dali learned uality. He was subsequently re-admitted but that regression to primary narcissism, symbol- eventually despaired of being able to reconcile ized by Narcissus asleep in a fetal position, can the Surrealists with communism. Federico Gar- lead to the loss of self. The painting is believed cía Lorca was assassinated in 1936 by Fascist to portray Freud’s libidinal theory of develop- forces during the Spanish Civil War. His homo- mental progression from primary narcissism, to sexuality and Republican views were cited at the autoerotism and secondary narcissism, to object time as reasons for his murder. Ovid’s myth love. Furthermore, Gibson (1996) points out that served Dali’s purposes very well as the themes Dali was well aware of Freud’s connection be- of suicide, loss of self, death and rebirth reso- tween narcissism and homosexuality in the psy- nated in the artist’s own life experience. choanalyst’s study of Leonardo. While the paint- There are some elements in Dali’s painting that ing suggests that Narcissus-Dali was isolated conformed to Freud’s formula for successful art from both male and female suitors and preferring and may suggest that Dali came closer to the company of his own reflection, the real-life Freud’s artistic sensibility than the psychoana- Dali struggled with his homosexual impulses lyst may have thought possible for a modern art- particularly when it came to his friendship with ist. For example, Dali’s doubling of the image of the poet Federico García Lorca (Gibson, 1997). Narcissus can be thought of as a visual equiva- In the poem Dali quotes lines from a Lorca poem lent of a pun, a representation with a double involving the “wharves of blood.” James believed meaning. In this case the form or the code dom- that Dali was more homosexual than heterosex- inates the primary process content. The por- ual and that Gala had not really “cured” the artist trayal of narcissism is set in the cultural context of his homosexuality (Gibson, 1997). of an ancient myth as well as in the context of an Further, both Lomas and Finkelstein assert that artistic tradition. Dali’s Narcissus pays homage the painting portrays Freud’s controversial death to Caravaggio’s Narcissus (c1600) and thus in- instinct. Lomas (1999, 2000), for example, as- scribes the painting within a known art historical serts that the emotion of disgust is a “presenta- context. (Ades and Taylor, 2005; Lomas, 1999, tion” of the death drive. The arousal of disgust 2000). This fulfills one of the art historian Gom- was certainly an important part of Dali’s art. brich’s criteria for the artist’s control of uncon- Freud is reported to have asked about the ants scious material – the conscious control of histor- crawling on the hand in the painting. This image ical and cultural context. One can look at the was prominent in Dali’s 1929 film Un Chien an- painting as a series of visual puns intended to dalou in which a hand crawling with ants was to reveal as well as master a number of different evoke disgust in the viewer. The death drive can issues having to do with narcissism in general as also be construed in the hand being fossilized or well as likely having relevance to the artist’s own transformed into rock. The image of Narcissus personal history. fading into the surrounding rocks can be con- Further, the painting adds to a psychoanalytic strued in the same way – the return of something understanding of narcissism. Freud had sug- living to an inorganic state. There is no doubt gested a linkage between narcissism and AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 10 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 paranoia in the Schreber case (1911) but never published article in 1949 (Lacan, 1949). Finkel- fully spelled out this linkage. Meissner (1978) stein also cites Dali’s painting The Angelus of has detailed this relationship more explicitly in Gala (1935) that depicts Gala and her mirror im- his monograph on paranoia. In Metamorphosis age, as evidence of Lacan’s influence. In con- of Narcissus, Dali was attempting to represent trast, Lomas (2000) cautions that it is unlikely this linkage pictorially. Freud also never spelled that Dali knew about Lacan’s mirror phase con- out the relationship between his death instinct cept in any detail when he painted Narcissus be- concept and narcissism. It was not until Rosen- cause it was not published in full form until 1949. feld’s (1971) paper on the aggressive compo- Jeffett (2010) reviewed the publication history of nent in narcissism that this connection was sug- Lacan’s mirror stage concept but does not take gested in the psychoanalytic literature. Art histo- a firm stand on this issue. In any case, the con- rians, particularly Lomas (1999, 2000), have ar- vergence of their views on mirroring is intriguing. gued that Dali’s painting suggested that aggres- Another psychoanalytic influence on Dali’s ren- sion has a strong role in narcissism and that this dering of Narcissus in addition to Freud and La- aggression is connected to the death instinct. It can is surely Otto Rank’s The Double (1914) may be that the addition of the dog eating raw [1925]. Rank reviewed literary and anthropolog- meat is meant to convey the role of oral aggres- ical references to reflections, shadows, souls, sion in Narcissus’ predicament. and doubles. In many of these instances the While Dali seems to be following Freud in depict- double was associated with the power to steal ing the transformation from primary narcissism life away. Rank’s theoretical contribution cen- to autoerotism to object love, the painting seems tered on narcissism and the representation of also to presage a view of narcissism in terms of the self or aspects of the self. Written in 1914, what can be called self and object representa- The Double did not use the language of self and tional terms. The poem, the painting, and the in- self-representation but was surely a precursor of structions involving the “narcissistic experience” the self and object concepts that were alluded to all emphasize the loss and re-gaining of the in Freud’s 1914 paper. Finkelstein (1983) dis- sense of self. Recall the line of poetry: “Narcis- cusses Dali’s use of the double image in sets of sus annihilates himself in the cosmic vertigo” paintings in the 1930’s including Metamorphosis (Dali 1937). While this viewpoint was alluded to of Narcissus (1937). He makes the point that the by Freud in his narcissism paper (1914b), it was double images make the most artistic impact left for psychoanalysts like Winnicott, Mahler, when they are painted in the context of a philo- Kernberg, and Kohut to fully explicate this as- sophical position. The Narcissus was painted pect of narcissism.5 Dali seems to have antici- under the influence of the paranoid-critical meth- pated this shift in psychoanalytic emphasis in his odology and the double images meant to illus- painting and poem. trate the subjectivity of reality. His reading of Art historians are in disagreement about the in- Rank was plausibly an important influence. fluence of Lacan’s concept of the mirror phase Dali’s interest in doubles and double images had (Lacan, 1949) on Dali’s painting of Narcissus. a personal dimension as well. The artist was Finkelstein (1996) has argued that because of born nine months after his brother died of “gas- their shared views of paranoia in the 1930’s Dali tro-enteritic cold” at twenty-one months. Dali “may have” been exposed to Lacan’s concept of claims to have been named after this brother, the mirror stage before he painted Narcissus. Salvador, although their full names were differ- Lacan presented his mirror stage work at the ent (----, 2008). Dali congress in Marienbad in 1936, in an encyclope- described himself in terms that has come to be dia article in 1938, and in revised form in a known as the replacement child syndrome

5 Tutter (2014) makes a very similar point in her paper on the painter Poussin renderings of the Narcissu theme. AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 11 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 (Sabbadini, 1988). In his autobiography, for ex- He mentions how he had been eating snails in ample, he wrote,” [My brother’s} death plunged the south of France when he saw a photograph my father and mother into the depths of despair; of Freud in the newspaper, reporting on his exile. they found consolation only upon my arrival into He claims that, “I had just that instant discovered the world. My brother and I resembled each the morphological secret of Freud! Freud’s cra- other like two drops of water but we had different nium is a snail! His brain is in the form of a spiral reflections” (Dali, 1942, p. 2). As with the meta- – to be extracted with a needle! This discovery phor he used in describing the unsuccessful strongly influenced the portrait drawing which I Freud visits, Dali’s description of his likeness to later made from life, a year before his death” his brother places the relationship in the context (Dali, 1942, p. 23). of reflection, the double, and narcissism. Two psychoanalytic papers discuss Dali’s 1938 The poem makes clear that the transformation of Freud portrait. Romm and Slap (1983) com- Narcissus/Dali involves the artist’s wife: “Gala - mented on it along with three other portraits of my Narcissus!” (Dali, 1937). While this transfor- the psychoanalyst that Dali completed later. mation is meant to represent the finding of ma- They interpret these works as depicting Freud as ture object love, the triumph of Eros over Than- angry and distant: “[T]he portrait can be seen as atos, it seems more likely that Gala serves as an a hostile gesture. Dali is angry at Freud for his externalization of his own grandiose self (Lo- previous rejections and projects that anger onto mas, 2000). In this way she serves as a narcis- the face of Freud in the picture. Furthermore, the sistic object, a double or a reflection of the artist. snail, an inconsiderable creature tucked into its There was a point in Dali’s career when he be- protective shell, is perceived as insignificant for gan signing his paintings Dali-Gala, a represen- not having emerged from his shell to pay hom- tation of this narcissistic love (Gibson, 1997). age to Dali” (Romm and Slap, 1983, pp. 343- This painting was perhaps created under the in- 344). They place Dali’s hostility to Freud in the fluence of Freud’s theory of narcissism. It more- context of the artist’s relationship with his father over extended Freud’s work into more specific and argue that because of similarities between representations of the death instinct, self-repre- Freud and the elder Dali, that the young artist sentation, doubles, and aggression in narcis- displaced his hostilities toward his father onto sism. It may have been influenced by Rank and Freud. possibly Lacan, and it may have anticipated the Brok’s (2006) somewhat different interpretation later psychoanalytic work. proposed that Freud was an unwitting twin to Freud’s head as a snail Dali’s love/hate wish for a double. He bases this The third aspect of the meeting discussed here on the notion of Dali as a replacement child for is the outcome of the sketches of Freud that Dali his dead brother. Brok concludes: “I am propos- spent most of the meeting making. These served ing that the sketch is a condensed version of as the basis for a portrait that he completed later Dali’s deceased brother, Dali’s deep sense of that year, Portrait of Freud (1938), now hanging being alive and dead, Dali’s unwanted experi- in the Freud Museum in London. Bearing a great ence of his own eventual deceased self, and the likeness to sketches that Leonardo da Vinci did soon-to-be-deceased Freud” (Brok, 2006, p. 21). in preparation for his paintings, Dali may well To these accounts I would add that the construc- have been identified with Leonardo in making tion of the Freud sketch is an example of Dali’s them. His emulation of Leonardo was perhaps paranoid-critical methodology and the ambiva- part of Dali’s admission that he wanted to im- lence noted in the portraits can also be under- press Freud as a “dandy of ‘universal intellectu- stood in a framework of narcissism. alism’ (Dali, 1942, p. 24). Dali’s account of how he came to conceive of Dali recalled in his autobiography the origins of Freud’s skull as a snail is not only a good exam- how his portrait of Freud as a snail came about. ple of his paranoid critical methodology; it also AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 12 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 provides evidence that he was still heavily influ- characterized Dali’s relationships with other im- enced by this methodology in 1938. The coinci- portant men, including Breton and Picasso, as dence that the artist was eating snails when he well as the Surrealist movement and psychoa- spotted a picture of Freud escaping the Nazis in nalysis in general. While this pattern can be Paris brings the two experiences together in a seen in the artist’s relationship with his father new and significant discovery-- Freud’s cranium and has ostensibly competitive elements, I sug- is a snail. This is the essence of Dali’s paranoid- gest that the pattern can also be conceptualized critical methodology—a chance event takes on in terms of envy rather than exclusively in com- a significance not understood by others. This petitive terms. Dali envied Leonardo and sought special significance can be utilized as a source to emulate him, including in his way of sketching of artistic inspiration as well as to view so-called Freud (Lomas, 2006). He also envied Freud and reality in a new and valid manner. sought to replace psychoanalysis first with the When Dali was approaching Freud’s apartment paranoid-critical method and soon after with his for the meeting, he noticed a snail had perched philosophical shift to Nuclear Mysticism. itself on a bicycle seat in the courtyard. This sec- Despite these various interpretations, the sym- ond chance occurrence reinforced the original bolism of the snail remains unclear. Finkelstein conclusion that snails and Freud went together. (1996, p. 390) quotes Freud saying that the snail This in turn led to Dali’s conclusion that he had is a “perfect” female symbol. This would be con- “unconsciously” sensed Freud’s impending sistent with the view that Dali’s snail image rep- death, another insight provided by the paranoid- resents a derogation of Freud’s masculinity. But critical method. Dali, the creative artist and the there are also other possible determinants of paranoid individual can thus see truths that oth- Dali’s conception of Freud’s head as a snail. For ers cannot. example, Dali was interested in natural morphol- Zweig feared that if he showed Freud Dali’s ogy, and developed a special interest in the kind sketch, the old man would see its deathly impli- of spirals found in snail shells, nautilus shells, cations, even lying to Dali and telling him that he pinecones, and hurricanes. In his paintings after had showed the sketch to Freud and that he the meeting with Freud, he became obsessed liked it (Dali, 1964). When the artist learned that with the “golden section”, the “golden rectangle”, Freud had not been shown the portrait, he and the “golden spiral.” These are aesthetically merely took this as further evidence that he had pleasing forms based on numerical and geomet- indeed predicted Freud’s death. ric representations of form. The golden spiral There seems to be some agreement that there form, for example, is a visual representation of was cruelty involved in the sketch that Dali made the Fibonacci number sequence where each of Freud. There are many ways in which he number after the first two is the sum of the two could have portrayed the aging Freud. The fact previous numbers. In his shift to “classical” paint- that Dali explicitly declared that Freud’s brain ing, these mathematical and geometric consid- could be extracted with a needle and eaten like erations played a greater role in his aesthetic a snail can plausibly be viewed as an indication philosophy and artistic style (Lomas, 2000). of Dali’s animosity toward Freud. Dali had a Dali’s characterization of Freud's skull as a snail tendency to appear to be in a relationship while shell therefore may represent admiration as well undermining it at the same time. Aggression to- as derogation.6 ward idealized male authority figures Conclusion: Transference enactment

6 It is perhaps also relevant that Dali was also obsessed combination of the hard exterior form and the soft inner with the idea of hard and soft forms (Ades and Taylor, form. The explanation of this preoccupation is beyond the 2005; Finkelstein, 1996). The snail represents the scope of this paper except to point out that a specific AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 13 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 This article details specific elements of the meet- demonstrating “a complex set of psychic invest- ing between Salvador Dali and Sigmund Freud ments” in Leonardo that included a deliberate about a year before the latter’s death to trace its and conscious identification with him (p. 6). After significance in relation to their own aesthetic the- the Freud meeting Dali set about to stage his ories. Building on this discussion, I would like to new artistic turn to classicism in a series of paint- offer some speculations about some uncon- ings that began with Leda Atomica (1949), a scious implications of Dali’s longstanding rela- painting likely inspired by Leonardo’s Leda and tionship with Freud. Specifically, I offer the spec- the Swan (1508). ulation that the meeting involved a complex en- I believe that Dali wished to have his grandiosity actment of narcissistic fantasies involving Dali’s as a renaissance artist-scientist reflected back to conflicts with male authority figures. I propose him in Freud’s appreciation of him, just as the here that aspects of the meeting recapitulated psychoanalyst clearly appreciated the genius of some of the themes of the painting that Dali Leonardo. Things did not work out quite that brought to show Freud. way, however. Dali was well aware that Freud’s Dali likened his previous attempts to meet with analysis of Leonardo focused on both his homo- Freud to “three drops of water which lacked the sexuality and his repressed love for his mother— reflection to make them glitter” (Dali, 1942, p. two subjects about which Dali was most con- 23). The implication of this metaphor is that Dali flicted. (Gibson, 1997). As was discussed both was looking forward to an experience in which the painting and the paranoia article alluded to his self-esteem could be enhanced--the glitter-- the theme of homosexuality, following Freud’s by Freud’s reflective presence. This implies a thinking about the role of homosexual libido in narcissistic experience of mutual grandiosity. both narcissism and paranoia. In the painting as Dali’s wish to bask in Freud’s reflection had been well as in the meeting, Dali seems to be both un- frustrated, leaving the artist with feelings of bit- consciously affirming and disavowing his homo- terness. The artist also knew of the meeting that sexuality in his behavior with Freud. took place between Freud and Breton that had Dali had had a long, passionate, but perhaps not left Breton embittered as well. physical, relationship with Lorca after his mother Above, I noted that Dali claimed that his initial died. He also describes a highly sexual attrac- intention was to impress Freud with his expan- tion to a boy when he was eight years old that is sive intellectual prowess as both artist and seri- described in graphic detail in The Secret Life of ous scientist of paranoia. Lomas (2006) has Salvador Dali (1942). The disavowal is seen in demonstrated that Dali consciously emulated the narrative of the painting he brought to Freud and was in competition with Leonardo da Vinci and in the accompanying poem to the effect that in a number of ways, including in his manner of Gala was the cure for his narcissism, his para- sketching Freud, who made Leonardo the sub- noia, and his homosexuality owing to the fact ject of an extensive biographic analysis (Freud that her love had transformed him from narcis- 1910). He characterizes Dali as having a “Leo- sism to object love. nardo complex” and determined to become For his part, Freud was not interested in discuss- “classical” by combining modern science with art ing the paper on paranoia. He did, however, af- as Leonardo had done in his time. Lomas firm that Dali was a fanatic, a technical artistic demonstrates in some detail how the sketches master, and the reason he had adopted a more of Freud bear an uncanny resemblance to da favorable impression of surrealism. This was Vinci’s own sketches (pp. 5-6). Lomas con- music to Dali’s ears, and he treasured these cludes that in the meeting with Freud Dali was characterizations to the end of his life (Gibson, sexual symbol does not entirely explain the complexity of the snail image for Dali. AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 14 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 1997). We can understand these interactions as to narcissism. This a strand of theory that Freud a gratification in which Freud reflects back to never pursued in his later writings on the death Dali what in the artist’s mind represents a gran- instinct. As mentioned above, several art histori- diose conception of himself. The meeting in ans feel that Dali’s Narcissus painting was done these respects has the hallmarks of an enact- with the Freud’s concept of the life and death in- ment of a narcissistic mirroring experience de- stincts in mind (Finkelstein, 1996; Lomas, 1999, scribed by Lacan (1949) and later by other psy- 2000). In this sense Rosenfeld’s understanding choanalysts. It also parallels the same kind of of narcissism in the context of the death instinct imagery as the mirroring waters of Narcissus’ re- may be consonant with what Dali’s painting was flection in the pool depicted in the painting Dali attempting to represent pictorially. Rosenfeld as- brought to show Freud. serted that some narcissistic states involve a “vi- The problem for Dali was that his relationships olent destructive process” such that the “libidinal with men in authority were often fraught with self is almost completely absent or lost” (p. 177). conflict. Dali developed the paranoid-critical He writes that omnipotent narcissism defends method under the banner of Surrealism but was against primitive envious destructive wishes. at the same time challenging and subverting The narcissist believes that everything valuable Breton’s methodology of automatism (Finkel- in external objects is part of him or controlled by stein, 1996). In like fashion, Metamorphosis of him. This I believe accounts for Dali’s remark Narcissus was painted under the banner of psy- about Freud and himself “devouring each other choanalysis, but it, too, can be seen as challeng- with their eyes” as well as the characterization of ing and subverting important aims of psychoa- Freud’s head as a snail, one of the artist’s favor- nalysis. Dali felt he had no use for psychoanaly- ite foods. In the painting, the image of the dog sis as a treatment for mental ills—Gala was the eating raw meat may refer to the destructive as- answer to all of his troubles. No doubt in part in- pects of narcissism as well. In Dali’s case, iden- spired by the idea of free association, the para- tification with and envy of his brother and father, noid-critical method also involved citing random replicated in his ambivalent relationships with events as evidence of underlying truth. Dali’s Breton, Freud, and others can be distinguished goal was the destruction of the sense of reality, from oedipal conflict although it may be con- and the social structure that purported to support fused with it. that reality. In addition, Dali at this time privi- In conclusion, I would like to propose that for Dali leged regression and the indulgence of (often the meeting with Freud involved a wish to estab- perverse) pleasure over reason and understand- lish a mutually gratifying mirroring experience ing (Finkelstein, 1996). that defended against envious and destructive As the meeting went on and Dali finished sketch- feelings to acquire and control all of Freud’s ing, the artist became increasingly insistent that most admirable qualities and achievements. Freud look at his paranoia paper. He writes in This is similar to Romm and Slap’s (1983) obser- his autobiography that “contrary to my hopes we vations on the Freud-Dali meeting in which they spoke little but devoured each other with our place the artist’s hostility in an Oedipal, father- eyes” (Dali, 1942, p. 75). I suggest that the de- transference model. I have supplemented this structive sadism in this remark is significant. analysis by suggesting that we should add a nar- Psychoanalytic conceptualization of narcissism cissistic dimension to our understanding of Dali’s subsequent to Freud’s initial major work on the ambivalent relationship with Freud. Just as Dali subject (Freud, 1914b) has emphasized the role wished the viewer of his painting to have a nar- of primitive aggression and envy in a fuller un- cissistic experience, I believe the artist experi- derstanding of narcissism (Kernberg, 1976; enced this himself with Freud. Rosenfeld, 1971). Rosenfeld (1971) attempted References to relate fusion and defusion of the death instinct AJPRR: https://escipub.com/american-journal-of-psychiatric-research-and-reviews/ 15 John J. Hartman, AJPRR, 2020; 3:25 [1] Ades, D. Dada and Surrealism. London: Thanes [19] Freud, S. Leonardo Da Vinci and a memory of and Hudson, 1974. his childhood, Standard Edition, 1910; 11: [2] Ades, D., Taylor, M. 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