This letter contains a personal anecdote where Sigmund Freud failed to remember the name of the painter Signorelli (who painted the frescoes in the Orvieto Cathedral), replacing it instead with the names Botticelli and Boltraffio.
p326-327 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904.
Published bilingual by www.Freud2Lacan.com /Homepage/3 Fundamental Texts of Freud on the Play of the Signifier (2. THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens)), see p8
Citations
On the Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness : 1898b : Sigmund Freud, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (18980101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
During my summer holidays I once went for a carriage-drive from the lovely city of Ragusa[2] … A little later, our conversation turned to the subject of Italy and of pictures, and I had occasion to recommend my companion strongly to visit Orvieto some time, in order to see the frescoes there of the end of the world and the Last Judgement, with which one of the chapels in the cathedral had been decorated by a great artist. But the artist’s name escaped me and I could not recall it.
SE III p290 [2] James Strachey’s footnote, On the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, now known as Dubrovnik. Freud’s companion on the drive was a Berlin lawyer named Freyhau (Freud, 1950a, Letter 96). (Letter to Wilhelm Fliess : 22nd September 1898 : Sigmund Freud)]