Freud's Different Versions Of Forgetting ‘Signorelli’: Rhetoric And Repression

The author examines Freud's three written accounts of his forgetting of the name ‘Signorelli’. The three texts—a letter to Fliess, an early scientific article and a chapter in ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’—contain significant differences that are examined in detail. In describing the incident, Freud made successive changes that were matched to his theoretical explanations for the forgetting. More than this, close examination of the differences between the versions offers clues about Freud's own personal feelings that he was seeking to avoid exposing to his readers, while discussing the reasons for his slip of memory. It is suggested that Freud's thoughts are likely to have included his ambivalent feelings towards the death of his father, his sense of Jewishness and his relations with his sister-in-law, with whom he had been travelling when he had seen Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto. Freud's other associations with Orvieto are examined. It is argued that the different versions of the episode represent a means by which Freud himself repressed uncomfortable thoughts exposed during his self-analysis. As such, this paper provides evidence for a discursive interpretation of repression.