Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile Reminiscence

A psychoanalytic study interprets a childhood memory of a bird and related fantasies to reconstruct the subject's psychosexual development, arguing that early maternal attachment, repression, and displacement shaped later affect, erotic orientation, and artistic interests. Drawing on biographical fragments, diary entries, and the subject's relationships with attractive young male pupils, the analysis links libidinal impulses to mechanisms of sublimation and intellectual curiosity, proposing creative and scientific pursuits as transformed sexual aims. The essay presents this case as illustrative of one developmental route toward male homosexuality while acknowledging multiple contributing factors and the limits of a single explanatory model.