ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the position that Freud holds in establishing Leonardo's work as both compensatory and sublimatory with the focus on Freud's presumptions regarding Leonardo's infancy and his assertion that Leonardo's paintings trace his attempt to re-create the 'boy adored and desired' by his mother. Freud's essay on Leonardo provides an analysis that frames certain acts of creativity as the agency of sublimation or substitution. In order to demonstrate further the psychoanalytic tendency to attribute certain art products to narcissistic aims, the chapter focuses on the influential writings of Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel who equally holds that artistic creation can be engendered either to facilitate psychological development or, on the contrary, to play a role in reinforcing the ego's defences. Hanna Segal sets up an opposition that is far more outspoken than either Julia Kristeva or Smirgel in that she uses discriminatory terms that are commonly understood, namely, 'beauty' and 'ugliness'.
