53 definitions
The book's index
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood
52 concepts · 53 definitions
- androgynous deity1
- appeal to authority1
- artist1
- biography1
- chance1
- chastity1
- childhood1
- childhood memory2
- compulsion1
- compulsive brooding1
- condensation1
- creativity1
- distraction1
- fixation1
- flying dreams1
- genitalia1
- great man1
- hero worship1
- heroic age1
- history1
- humility1
- infantile sexual research1
- inhibition1
- instinct1
- inversion1
- investigation1
- knowledge1
- legend1
- leonardesque smile1
- libido1
- love1
- man1
- masterpiece1
- Mona Lisa1
- nature1
- pathography1
- peaceableness1
- perseveration1
- personal god1
- phallic mother1
- play impulse1
- polymath1
- psychoanalysis1
- questioning1
- rebellion1
- recapitulation1
- religiousness1
- research1
- son1
- sublimation1
- vulture1
- work of art1
A Childhood memory (n.) is not fixed when lived but drawn out later, altered and falsified in the service of later trends, so it can hardly be told from phantasy.
A Childhood memory (n.) that the person does not himself understand often cloaks priceless evidence about his mental development.
Investigation (n.) can replace love: whoever postpones loving until he fully knows ends by knowing instead of loving, beyond love and hatred.
The Artist (n.) feels towards his works like a father; Leonardo made his and then cared no more for them, as his father had not cared for him.
Childhood (n.) only looks idyllic in retrospect: children are driven through it by one wish, to grow up and do what adults do, which fuels all their games.
History (n.) written in an age of reflection expresses present beliefs and wishes more than the past, just as childhood memories do for a person.
The Masterpiece (n.) is, for its creator, never more than an unsatisfactory embodiment of a dimly seen perfection he despairs of reaching.
A Personal god (n.) is psychologically an exalted father; young people lose their faith as soon as the father's authority breaks down.
Rebellion (n.) against the father was the infantile root of Leonardo's scientific daring: authority and the ancients stood for the father, nature for the nourishing mother.
Sublimation (n.) is the sexual instinct's capacity to replace its immediate aim by other, more highly valued aims that are not sexual.
The Androgynous deity (n.) such as the vulture-headed Mut joins male and female marks, which myth reads as the primal creative force or as divine perfection.