Promising a continuation of the article Life in art or artificial life? Dali, with an art therapeutic analysis of his work, was faced with the immensity of this topic and drowned in the details. It was necessary to limit the range of issues considered only to the artist’s main psychological conflicts, only briefly touching on the complex symbolism characteristic of his work. The article still turned out to be quite voluminous, so I divided it into two parts. I believe that Dali’s work is of great value for people interested in the human psyche, especially its disorders. In his paintings you can see a reflection of the inner world of a traumatist, who outwardly manifests himself as a flamboyant narcissist and psychopath. In his work, any artist, whether a professional or an art therapy client, tries to close his most traumatic gestalts, reproducing them over and over again in his creations. The same themes, plots, objects are repeated many times in Dali’s paintings. With their help, we will try to better understand the mental space of this extraordinary person. As was already mentioned in the first part of the article, nothing foreshadowed the success of Salvador Dali. His early works were not distinguished by any particular technical skill or originality. It was Gala who awakened and supported the direction in her husband’s work, which was a frank sublimation of his psychological problems: fears, especially the fear of death, phobias, sexual insecurity and at the same time unbridled sexual fantasies. It excited, shocked, and attracted the attention of a jaded public. But in order to surrender to the flow of crazy fantasy and not drown in it, but be able to return to the shores of reality, Dali needed support. He found her in the person of Gala. Dali was fascinated by psychoanalysis. Freud's personality and his works aroused great interest among the artist. A quote from Freud: “A hero is one who rebels against his father’s authority and defeats him,” taken as the epigraph of the artist’s book “The Diary of a Genius.” Whether it was a game or whether it was really important for Dali that his work had a “scientific” basis, he creates and promotes his paranoid-critical method within the framework of surrealism. Surrealism is literally translated as over-realism. It assumes, like the method of free association, the absolutely free expression of hidden, shameful, forbidden, destructive impulses. Images from the artist's unconscious are extracted and embodied in works of art, becoming visible to the viewer. For creativity there are no moral, ethical, aesthetic, logical or other restrictions imposed by the mind and super-ego. The critical part of the method is carried out with the help of paranoia, that is, the world is perceived as an illusion, a deception that requires exposure and destruction. The phantasmagoria depicted in Dali’s paintings can shock and provoke. They are often perceived as puzzles that cannot be solved with the help of the mind. They are like a dream, like the hallucinations of a madman; they are characterized by the ambiguity of a crazy game, chaos, destruction of the whole and the connections between parts. However, if you look at the color scheme of most of Dali’s paintings, it is very harmonious and calm in contrast to the tense, distorted, surreal images. The colors and shades of the background largely reflect the childhood impressions of little Salvador: this is the color of the sky, sea, sandy coast and coastal rocks on the Costa Brava - a combination of soft blue, blue, yellow ocher and brownish shades. And against the backdrop of these natural, calming colors, stunning, unpredictable surreal pictures unfold, either from dreams, or from a distorted perception of reality in an altered state of consciousness. Fantastic forms in many ways also had prototypes from childhood. The bizarre outlines of the cliffs of Cadaques or Cape Creus, near Dali's hometown of Figueres, are reproduced many times in the artist's canvases. Already in childhood, a lonely child escaped from the unbearable reality of a substitute child into the worldfantasies. Even then, the images that filled his paintings were formed. The ability to see a different, fantastic world in the everyday gave rise to the original subjects of his paintings. For example, Dali came up with the idea of ​​a melting clock while looking at Camembert cheese spreading from the scorching rays of the sun. “The Persistence of Memory”, 1931 A very important detail in Dali’s most significant paintings is a huge amorphous sleeping head. She looks like an empty shell, a phantom with missing energy. No wonder she needs so many crutches and supports. Crutches in the form of supports, so often reproduced on many canvases, symbolized powerlessness and weakness for Dali. They were based on real crutches that were on the veranda of family friends. They cast very long shadows at sunset and made an indelible impression on young Salvador. The soft head is a psychological self-portrait of the artist, and its prototype was a real stone from Cape Creus. The head sleeps, dreams, and its crazy fantasies are embodied in the painting. “Dream” (“Sleeping”), 1937 We can see the same big-nosed “soft” head in many of Dali’s paintings: “Gloomy Game”, “Portrait of Paul Eluard”, “Persistence” Memory" and others. In the painting “Riddles of Desire: My Mother, My Mother, My Mother,” there is also a sleeping, exhausted “soft” head, which is part of a strange structure with many cells. Most of them have the inscription “my mother” (“ma mere”), some are left blank. It’s as if Dali’s “psychic body” consists mainly of cells filled and sealed by the mother. This deep metaphor can be applied to any person raised by a mother. “The Riddle of Desire: My Mother, My Mother, My Mother,” 1929 Relationships with an overprotective, immensely pampering, but at the same time forbidding, intimidating and extremely pious mother were very contradictory . His mother died when Salvador was 16 years old. The Oedipus complex was not overcome until this age. The young man’s main emotion was anger that his adoring mother, with whom he was in symbiosis, was taken away. But other main themes of the relationship with the overwhelming, enveloping mother - such as the fear of absorption, the fear of castration - constantly arose later in his work. So in this picture, at a distance, there are compositions of figures with a very clear meaning. It’s as if they collected and reflected all the fears and phobias that haunt the artist. The head of a woman with a brutal smile and a hand with a castrating knife, located in close proximity to a young man who, turning away, hugs a large, male figure without a face, with a head in the form of a brain (father?), as if seeking salvation from him. The fragment also contains the constant locust and a lion - a symbol of lustful desires. In the fragment on the right, in the gap of the cellular structure, a female torso with one incised breast is visible. Dali had a phobia of large female busts. The mother formed insurmountable sexual complexes in her son, up to a complete ban on sex. The father also contributed to the “sexual education” of his son. To protect him from promiscuity and its consequences, he left a book on venereal diseases with terrible pictures open on the piano. An impressionable boy suffered a serious trauma to sexual development. Dali's paintings often reflect this insoluble conflict: aversion to sex, fear of it and an uncontrollable desire for it. The artist perceived his own sexuality in an extremely perverted way. Symbolically castrated by his mother, Dali felt sexually incompetent, despite the fact that physiologically he was completely normal. He could not overcome his aversion to the physical, and only Gala was allowed intimacy with him. There was also complete uncertainty with gender identity. The artist lived with the woman he passionately loved, but observed homosexual tendencies in himself, calling himself an intellectual homosexual. Beginning of a series of articles: Life in art or artificial life? Dali Continued here: Dali's art therapy. Part 2 Psychologist, EOT therapist, Art therapist Svetlana