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When Sigmund Freud gave us his magnificent instrument, the recognition of the unconscious, he put upon us a heavy moral obligation by the way in which he used this instrument. This obligation is to make use of it in a tactful manner. Tact is consideration of the Ego: consideration of the Ego of the analysand, of the Ego of the reader of analytic literature, of the Ego of the listener to an oral presentation, consideration even of our own Ego and its values. If, as analysts, we approach one of the greatest creative personalities, we must not do it without respect and veneration. It is certainly not the task of analytic biography “to blacken radiance and drag down sublimity to dust,”1 and we hope that our study does not arouse the suspicion that it was undertaken for such iconoclastic purposes.
What psychoanalytic investigation wants to achieve is the deepening of our understanding of the personality of the artist, always with the underlying hope that some of the understanding will transcend into the creative act and the gift of creativity, which are such enigmatic phenomena for us psychologists.
But tact is not the only limitation that is imposed upon our undertaking. A graver factor is the scarcity and uncertainty of the biographical material, which increases the risk of interpretation, a risk which is already great enough if we cannot obtain the conscious or unconscious confirmation of the person investigated. It thus may be considered an audacity to try to make statements concerning the unconscious motivations of a personality who lived several centuries ago. But the temptation is too great, the fascination of a great personality too strong, the discovery of deeper psychological connections too gratifying to abstain from the attempt.