Freud on Dali's Bicycle

What a great pleasure it is for me to be invited by my good friends Le Bon David and the VeloDrone to write a series of articles for Velosophy! Today my subject is The Bicycle and Salvador Dali.

Now, the internet abounds in photographs of Dali's bicycles. These bicycles lean with buckled wheels against picturesque walls, as amusing references to Dali's famous melting clocks. Dali's melting clocks were intended by him to represent the irrelevance of time.

Dali came to see me often in the early days, although this fact is nowhere on the public record. Indeed, why should it be? The relationship between a man and his psychoanalyst is a private affair.

My work on dreams had influenced him profoundly. It was the basis for the movement known as Surrealism, of which he was a leading light. He told me he dreamed of ants, of lions' heads, of fish hooks and of half-opened drawers.

My friend, I told him, these things represent your fears. The ants represent death, the lion's head represents both sexual desire and your fear of the aggression of your father. The fish hook represents family ties, which you are unable to escape, while the half-opened drawer represents female sexuality, of which you are afraid.

Then I shall paint these things until I conquer all my fears, he said grandly.

That is all very well, my friend, but what you really need is a hobby, I told him. Have you ever thought about getting a bicycle?

From that moment Dali became obsessed with bicycles. He painted them incessantly. He painted men in bowler hats on bicycles, men with umbrellas on bicycles, lobsters on bicycles. He bought himself a bicycle. He kept it in his studio, although he never rode it.

He began to dream of bicycles. He asked me what these dreams might signify.

You are going on a journey, I told him.

We had a great debate about the matter. He thought my interpretation was banal. We argued for hours quite heatedly. Eventually I had to tell him that his time was up.

Time! he shouted. Time is irrelevant!

You will not think so when you receive my bill, I said.

He stormed out.

It was immediately after this I believe he dreamed up the story about seeing my bicycle, the red hotwater bottle and the snail, which has plagued me ever since.