Freud, Sigmund

noting that he has been inclined to look upon surrealists, who seem to have chosen him as their patron saint, as absolute (or as 95%, like alcohol) fools, observing that the young Spaniard with his innocent and fanatical eyes, and his undeniable technical mastery made a different impression on him, commenting that it would indeed be very interesting to delve analytically into the genesis of such a painting [Dalí's The Metamorphosis of Narcissus], offering his thoughts on the concept of art, venturing the view that there were at any rate serious psychological problems [with Dalí], stating that analysis is like a woman who wants to be conquered but knows that she will be thought less of if she offers no resistance, also referring to Ernest Jones and his daughter    

...bis dahin war ich geneigt die Surrealisten, die mich scheinbar zum Schützpatron gewählt haben für absolute (sagen wir 95% wie ... Alkohol) Narren zu halten. Der junge Spanier mit seinen treuherzig fanatischen Augen und seiner unleugbaren technischen Meisterschaft hat mir eine andere Schätzung nahe gelegt Es wäre in der That sehr interessant die Entstehung eines solchen Bilder analytisch zu erforschen...Aber jedenfalls ernsthafte psycholog. Probleme...Die Analyse ist wie eine Frau die erobert werden will, aber weiß daß sie gering geschätzt wird wenn sie nicht Widerstand leistet...



2 pages, 8vo (c.23 x 14cm), stationery printed "Prof. D^r. Freud 39 Elsworthy Road London, N.W.3", London, 20 July 1938, horizontal fold

Freud's celebrated letter recording one of the great twentieth-century encounters - when psychoanalysis met surrealism.

The meeting the day before at Freud's new London home between the eighty-two-year-old psychoanalyst and the thirty-four-year-old Dalí, who counted himself one of  Freud's most fervent admirers, had been engineered by Zweig, who later briefly recorded the meeting, at which he was present, in his autobiography The World of Yesterday (1943). The painting Dalí chose to bring with him was his now famous The Metamorphosis of Narcissus - the first of his paintings to be produced fully in accordance with his so-called paranoiac critical method. This was perhaps a not inappropriate work to show the author of the epochal 1914 essay On Narcissism. Freud clearly regarded Dalí's work as over-intellectualized, to judge from the unforgettable putdown he uttered at the meeting: "In classic paintings I look for the subconscious - in a surrealist painting for the conscious".

A surreptitious sketch Dalí made of Freud during their meeting, and a pen-and-ink version executed later, are now in the Freud Museum, London. Neither was shown to Freud, since it was felt by Zweig that they conveyed the feeling of Freud's impending death.