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On 19 July 1938, in a pleasant, suburban house north of central London, an improbable event occurred: the meeting of Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalí. For the recently exiled founder of psychoanalysis, it was probably little more than an interesting meeting. For the artist, it was the culmination of years of planning and dreaming—an encounter brimming with emotional overtones. Freud casually mentioned the visit in a few brief letters; Dalí memorialized the event in his autobiography and drew four portraits of Freud in an attempt to convey his deep feelings about the man who he felt had profoundly affected his life and work.1 Dalí embellished his one-sided relationship with Freud with intense feelings and overinvested fantasies. A glance at Dalí's past and the pictures he drew after meeting Freud may shed some light on the significance which Freud held for Dalí.
Salvador Dalí was born in 1904, in Figueras, Spain. Three years before Dalí's birth, a gifted and beloved brother had died of meningitis at the age of seven. The new child was to serve as more than consolation: he was treated as a replacement and, at times, almost as a reincarnation of the dead boy. He was called by the same name: Salvador—“savior” in Spanish—and was later told that he resembled “the living portrait” of his brother.
From childhood on, Dalí had to compete with this memory. His behavior was frequently exhibitionistic, rebellious, and eccentric in an effort to appear unique. His proffered explanation was: “I wish to prove to myself that I am not the dead brother but the living one.”
Dalí saw his life as a parallel to the myth of Castor and Pollux. One brother, Castor, the child of mortals, was therefore