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It is now over half a century since Freud wrote his short essay “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood”, and it has been subjected to vigorous and sometimes stringent attacks by a number of critics. Amongst them was Jung, who argued cogently the weakness in Freud's speculation about the relation between Leonardo's use of the dual mother imagery and the fact of his having been illegitimate and cared for by two mothers. Other critics have sprung less advisedly into the foray, amongst them eminent art historians.
The first part of this volume is a polemic in answer to their criticisms. Here Eissler's capacity for painstaking ratiocination, his scrupulous determination to leave his reader in no doubt as to the distinction between fact and reasonable speculation, are as refreshing as they are convincing.
However, Eissler does much more than defend Freud; he develops interesting reconstructions of his own in which he uses with great skill methods in which he is clearly a master.
It is not possible in a short review to go into the complex and subtle arguments into which Eissler enters: the significance of Leonardo's revulsion against sexual congress, the probability of his being a sublimated homosexual, and the relation of early traumata to his scientific endeavour and his artistic genius.
It seems a pity that Eissler does not mention Jung's argument and, though he takes count of Neumann's essay, he dismisses it as irrelevant and unscientific in method. This comes about because Eissler's approach is based on Freud's genetic historical method of reconstructing the unconscious components influencing Leonardo.
To analytical psychologists the most interesting part of a volume which is more a series of essays than an organized presentation is to be found in Chapter 15, “Some Constructs”. Here Eissler draws a parallel between the thinking of Nicholas of Cusa and of Leonardo, paying particular attention to the ideas of each as to the transcendence and immanence of God. It is