| Summary: | This study aims to explore and counter the assumption that Prof. Ernst Gombrich was wary, and even dismissive, of psychoanalysis as a discipline. Though renowned for his interest in the psychology of viewing, new research suggests that, from his earliest career, Gombrich’s work was also crucially psychoanalytically-inflected. An unpublished dialogue from the 1980s, between Gombrich and Dr Joseph Sandler, a distinguished psychoanalyst, is considered here. Archival research reveals that Gombrich was for many years a member of the Imago Group – a monthly conference of psychoanalysts. Furthermore, Gombrich’s relationship with Ernst Kris, and the unpublished manuscript on caricature and regression they developed together, is reviewed alongside later works tracing a sustained interest in psychoanalytic issues. Ultimately, the article is an attempt to rehabilitate psychoanalysis into Gombrich’s reputation and prove that, though his engagement with psychoanalysis was not universally positive, it was sensitive, nuanced, consistent and, ultimately, underestimated.
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