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theories because It was only after the writings of Freud revealed to him the symbolic
world of the unconscious as a buried reality did he give full rein to his bent for dark
inexplicable fantasy He came to regard the dark wonder world of dreams and
hallucinations as the only subject matter worthy of artistic treatment (Powel, 1992;
Narcissus.
Freud used free association to trace the symbolic meaning of dream imagery to the
unconscious. Dali applied the same psychoanalytic device to his pictorial imagery. In
the painting there are two sets of representations of idealised desire as opposed to
reality. In the foreground to the left we see Narcissus representing the ephemeral
androgynous beauty, seeming neither male nor female and yet both. To the right we
see the hand representing harsh reality. On the background to the left we have a crowd
of animated naked individuals. These individuals are either male of female and
represent reality, while on the right hand side we have the image of perfection in a
pedestal, again androgynous and signifying the perfection of idealised unity. This
repetition of themes reflects the way Freud writes, constantly coming back to the
same fundamental points. Just as Freud manifests the compulsion to repeat (which is
necessarily unconscious) in the conscious writing of his work, Dali expresses the
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The giant stone hand in the foreground immediately draws the eye and is much
more prominent than the ethereal figure of Narcissus. Holding an egg (a favourite
Dalinian symbol representing duality of hard exterior and soft interior, and links with
pre-natal imagery) that here could represent reproduction, the sexual drive, or life
instinct. Yet at the same time we see ants inexorably crawling towards that egg. Ants
in Dalis paintings represent death. This hand (hand of creation?) therefore, holds life
yet cannot help but be affected by death. The flower sprouting from the cracked egg
represents a merging of those two concepts. It is a new life, but a new life that has
sprouted from death, as the flower grows upon the place where Narcissus dies. The
Beyond the Pleasure Principle are therefore brought together in this painting.
The other theme of this painting is the idealisation of unattainable desires. The
hand represents the harsh and unchangeable reality of life and death as represented
by the sexual and death drives in duality and opposition to the ephemeral and
Narcissus, in turn, represents desire, as the reflected image symbolises what Lacan
describes as the moment of initial recognition, when the mirror image represents a
more perfect idealised image of the self. But it also essentially represents miss-
recognition, for the image is perceived as other that is necessary to complete us, but
that we may never be united with. This is what the myth of Narcissus illustrates so
well, the longing to be reunited with our other half that we experience from that
first Lacanian moment - the first moment in which we realise that we are not complete
- and that we project on others as love. I love in you something more than you,
something that completes me it is the eternal search return to that perfect state of
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According to Freud we will always desire to be reunited with our mother and
return to that ideal dyadic relationship that precedes the intrusion of a third party
(represented by the father or anyone else that effectively comes between the child and
This could also be linked to Freuds initial description of the death drive. Freud
hypothesizes that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of
interpret this image of Narcissus not only as longing to be united with his image, but
perhaps also longing for death, which would lead to this inorganic state of being.
Towards the background we see the already mentioned naked figure on a pedestal.
This for me could represent love sublimation, the act of putting someone on a pedestal
and raising that person to the status of Thing. Yet it is not the person per se that we
are raising to that level, but the idea of completeness that we aspire to. The figure on
the pedestal, like Narcissus, is androgynous, neither obviously male nor female,
representing the unity of the two halves that is impossible and that we all idealise.
This duality is also symbolised by the fact that the pedestal stands on a chequered
floor, and it is placed precisely with half of it sanding on a black square and half on
white, uniting male and female in the perfect unison idealised in the Oedipus
complex, where the yearning to be reunited with the mother, to be complete and
I believe this phase of Dalis work is extremely useful as a case study for
psychoanalytical theory, as he not only knew of and actively used Freuds ideas in his
work, but also used these to analyse and depict his dreams, mirroring Freuds own
techniques of observing and dissecting ones own dreams. The fact that these works
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effectiveness as art constructed to effect us on a subconscious level and they serve to
Bibliography
BELSEY, C. (2005) Culture and the Real: Theorising Cultural Criticism. London and
BENDLE, M.F. (2001) death, the Abyss and the Real. Psychoanalytic Studies, 3 (2),
223-36
FREUD, S. (1984) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In: A. Richards, ed. The Penguin
Websites
http://www.countyhallgallery.com/education/dali_symbols.htm
http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/collection
On Metamorphosis of Narcissus
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=2987&sear
chid=7426&tabview=image