Castration Anxiety In Leonardo Da Vinci's Childhood Memory

Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential figure and authoritative thinker of the 20th century. He is the founder of the psychoanalytic theory which gained popularity among people at that time but was also subject to criticism. Although most people disagreed with Freud and his theory, some aspects of the psychoanalytic theory can be applied in our lives. Among these aspects is the castration anxiety. Castration anxiety is a boy’s fear of losing his genital. This fear occurs because the child thinks that his father will harm his genital organ as a punishment for having sexual desires for his mother. This essay will argue that castration anxiety is correlated with vision in “Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood” and in ‘The Uncanny”

both written by Sigmund Freud because in both of these works eyes are associated with castration. .
In Freud’s interpretation of Leonardo and his childhood memory, the readers see how Leonardo had a false memory of a vulture struck its tail in his mouth multiple times.

The tail is a symbol for penis and this represents sexual desires that all humans possess. However, Leonardo associated the vulture to his mother. A superficial reading of the text can explain that this association portrays how all babies get pleasure when they suck at their mother’s nipples. Nonetheless, when we read the text in depth, we can come to the conclusion that Leonardo’s memory represents over dependence and eroticization from him to his mother. The question that now arises is why did Leonardo associate the vulture to his

mother?
Thomas Hobbes, a famous writer of his time once said, “We know only what we have seen.” This quotation can be applied to Leonardo’s case as he too through seeing obtained knowledge.

Leonardo once read that all vultures were female and they could reproduce without male assistance. He came to the conclusion that he was also a vulture child because in ancient Egypt the mother was represented by the figure of a vulture. Furthermore, he came across the idea of Blessed Virgin and her Child. Leonardo then began to identify himself as the Christ Child because like the Christ Child, he was also brought by a single mother in the absence of his father. This connection made the fantasy more meaningful to him. The theme of seeing and knowing is explicitly revealed in the text. Leonardo read in the books of science about vultures and their reproductive method and he noticed how church fathers were talking about Mary, the virgin, and her son. This enabled him to make a connection between vultures, Christ Child, and his own situation. Hence, in the works of literature he read facts about vultures and the blessed virgin, because of this he was able to relate himself, as he began to think that his mother was like Mary and that she was represented by a

vulture.
Likewise, in Leonardo’s fantasy there is an association between castration anxiety and vision. As Leonardo had associated the vulture with his mother and as the vulture’s coda represents penis Leonardo thought that his mother also had a penis. Another reason for this assumption was the androgynous representations of mother goddesses like the Egyptian Mut which contained male and female genitals. When he later found out that women do not have a penis, he went through castration anxiety in which he thought that his mother is a threat to his penis. His feelings then turned into disgust towards his mother because according to Freud it was Leonardo’s desire for his mother’s penis which marked the apex of his attraction towards his mother. The truth caused him to repress his love for his mother and he began to identify himself with her, this condition is called narcissism in which the individual only loves himself. Leonardo then tried to find love in other individuals who were physically like him. Thus, he became homosexual. The intricate relationship between vision, how one interprets it and how it is transformed into knowledge can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood memory. However, a similar complexity is also observed in The Uncanny.
In the Uncanny, Freud psychoanalyzes “The Sandman” written by Hoffmann. According to Freud, the uncanny is the fear of castration which is symbolized by the loss of sight. Freud studies the case of Nathaniel who is the protagonist of The Sandman. He suggests that Coppelius who is an obnoxious lawyer and carries out chemical experiments with Nathaniel’s father is the evil part of the split father imago. The split father imago consists of two figures; one is the good father who intercedes for his child’s sight and the other is the Sandman in the form of Coppelius who tears out the child’s eyes. Nathaniel associated the Sandman with Coppelius because as a child he was told that the Sandman is coming and if he doesn’t go to bed, the Sandman will take his eyes out. In reality, it was Coppelius who used to come and it was Coppelius who threatened Nathaniel that he would remove his eyes.
Freud suggests that eyes and the loss of eyes are the manifest terms for penis and castration which are the latent terms. The manifest terms are supposed to derive its terrible meaning from the latent terms. Hence, according to Freud the eye in Hoffmann’s story represents the male organ which the Sandman disguised as the evil father threatens to remove. The preciousness of having eyes and the fear of having no eyes represents masculinity and the fear of castration respectively. The Sandman in Freud's view, generates a feeling of uncanniness because of the return of the repressed castration complex which is a part of an individual’s infantile sexuality. Freud associated the eye with the penis because according to him a boy’s worst fear is that he will get deprived of his penis and the loss of eyes is a symbol for losing the penis. Freud says that the fear of losing eyes is the source of the uncanny in Hoffmann’s Sandman.
The eye is the medium through which one reads the outside world. This is seen in Leonardo’s case in which he read something and interpreted it as something else and it was basically the eye that lead to castration anxiety. Similarly, in The Uncanny the eye was a symbol for the male organ and the loss of eye became a symbol for castration.