Freud, a devoted student of antiquity, probably visualized the absent sculptures of the Parthenon on the Acropolis and may have discerned in them a plastic representation of his unconscious conflict with Fliess. The repressed thoughts (doubts about Fliess and his theories) emerged into consciousness, but were displaced from their immediate source (especially the east pediment of the Parthenon) onto the whole Acropolis, the existence of which Freud then found himself doubting. Thus the Parthenon sculptures offer a possible clue to the specificity of the Acropolis for Freud's experience of derealization.