The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (4)

(image credit)

Let me suggest a psychological view on "The Persistence of Memory," i.e. that of trauma.

First, there is a decidedly stark theme and despondent tone to the painting. It's not outright, but rather quietly, horrifying, as we see some figure - animal, part-human, monster? - in the center.

Some people who experience a trauma cannot help but re-live the trauma, i.e. via "flashbacks." It is as if they cannot forget what traumatized them; it is as if they are doomed to remember it forever; they see it everywhere they go. This is what I believe the soft clocks represent.

So am I saying that Dali is expressing some trauma in his life through this painting? Perhaps I am. His parents told him, when he was a boy, that he was the reincarnation of a dead brother, who was a theme in his paintings.

Also, Dali's beloved mother died about 10 years before he painted "The Persistence of Memory." It was quite traumatizing for him, as it "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshiped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul."

If my thinking is correct, then I can argue that painting was a form of psychoanalysis for Dali and perhaps the means by which he came to grips with whatever trauma he may have experienced.