Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood Summary and Analysis

"Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood" is one of the longest essays in this collection and is divided into six parts. Part I begins with a discussion of why the psychoanalysts should be interested in great representative types like great artists or great thinkers. Freud argues that the common man may be interested in the psychology of these great persons because they instinctively want to bring the great person down to their own level by investigating their psychology to show that it is really the same as the common man's. This sordid goal is, however, not Freud's goal. Rather, he wants to look at characters like da Vinci to discern important facts about human psychology by looking at the best human representatives...