The Signorelli parapraxis represents the first and best known example of a
parapraxis
In psychoanalysis, a Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that occurs due to the interference of an unconscious subdued wish or internal train of thought. Classical examples involve slips of th ...
and its analysis in
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
's ''
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
''Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (german: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards, it became perhaps the ...
''. The parapraxis centers on a word-finding problem and the production of substitutes. Freud could not recall the name (
Signorelli) of the painter of the
Orvieto frescos and produced as substitutes the names of two painters
Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...
and
Boltraffio
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (or Beltraffio) (1466 or 1467 – 1516) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personal ...
. Freud's analysis shows what
associative processes had linked Signorelli to Botticelli and Boltraffio. The analysis has been criticised by linguists and others.
Botticelli – Boltraffio – Trafoi
One important ingredient in Freud's analysis was the North-Italian village
Trafoi
Stilfs (; it, Stelvio ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy. It is located near the northern ramp of the Stelvio Pass.
The municipality of Stilfs contains the ''frazione, frazioni'' (subdivisions, mainl ...
where he received the message of the suicide of one of his patients, struggling with sexual problems. Without Trafoi the substitute Boltraffio
associated Associated may refer to:
*Associated, former name of Avon, Contra Costa County, California
* Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto, a school in Canada
*Associated Newspapers, former name of DMG Media, a British publishing company
See also
*Associati ...
to it would be incomprehensible. Freud links Trafoi to the theme ''death and sexuality'', a theme preceding the word finding problem in a conversation Freud had during a trip by train through
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and Pars pro toto#Geography, often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of Southern Europe, south and southeast Euro ...
.
The second important ingredient in Freud's analysis is the extraction of an Italian word ''signor'' from the forgotten name ''Signorelli''. ''Herr'', the German counterpart of ''Signor'', is then linked to (Her)zegovina and the word ''Herr'' occurring, as Freud tells us, in the conversation. That country's Turks, he recalled, valued sexual pleasure a lot, and he was told by a colleague that a patient once said to him: "For you know, sir (''Herr'') if ''that'' ceases, life no longer has any charm". Moreover, Freud argued that (Bo)snia linked (Bo)tticelli with (Bo)ltraffio and Trafoi. He concludes by saying: "We shall represent this state of affairs carefully enough if we assert that ''beside the simple forgetting of proper names there is another forgetting which is motivated by repression''".
Freud denies the relevance of the content of the frescos. Nevertheless, psychoanalysts have pursued their investigations particularly into this direction, finding however no new explanation of the parapraxis.
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
suggested that the parapraxis may be an act of self-forgetting.
Trafoi in Kraepelin's dream
The first critique to Freud came from
Emil Kraepelin
Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin (; ; 15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist.
H. J. Eysenck's ''Encyclopedia of Psychology'' identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychi ...
, who in a postscript to his 1906 monograph on
language disturbances in dreams, relates a dream involving Trafoi. The dream centers around a neologism ''Trafei'', which Kraepelin links to Trafoi. The dream may be seen as an implicit critique on Freud's analysis. Italian ''trofei'' is associated to ''Trafei'' in the same way as Trafoi and clarifies Kraepelin's dream. The meaning of ''trofei'' reads in German ''Siegeszeichen'' (victory-signs) and this German word together with Latin ''signum'' clearly links to Freud's first name.
Sebastiano Timpanaro
In ''The Freudian Slip''
Sebastiano Timpanaro
Sebastiano Timpanaro (September 5, 1923 in Parma – November 26, 2000 in Florence) was an Italian classical philology, philologist, essayist, and Literary criticism, literary critic. He was also a long-time Marxism, Marxist who made importan ...
discusses Freud's analysis in chapter 6 "Love and Death at Orvieto." (p. 63-81). He in fact doubts that the name Boltraffio would have played a major role during the parapraxis, as he states: "Boltraffio is a ''Schlimbesserung''
hat is a substitute worse than another substitute and adds "the correction goes astray because of incapacity to localize the fault."(p. 71). He calls Botticelli an "involuntary banalization" and Boltraffio "a semi-conscious disimproved correction."(p. 75). As to the Signor-element in Freud's analysis he puts: "The immediate equivalence Signore= Herr is one thing, the extraction of ''signor'' from Signorelli and of ''Her(r)'' from Herzegowina is another."
Swales' investigation
Peter Swales
Peter Swales (25 December 1932 – 2 May 1996) was a businessman who served as the chairman of Manchester City F.C. from 1973 until 1993. He held a variety of prominent positions within the game of football, including Chairman of The Footbal ...
(2003) investigated the historical data and states that Freud probably visited an exposition of Italian masters in
Bergamo
Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...
mid-September 1898, showing paintings of Signorelli, Botticelli and Boltraffio one next to the other. In his view the paintings at the exposition were the source of the substitute names in the parapraxis. Swales dwells largely on the three paintings. The association of the name Boltraffio to the name
Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
, another hypothesis formulated by Swales (because Freud might have seen the statue of Boltraffio at the bottom of the Da Vinci monument on ''
Piazza della Scala
Piazza della Scala is a pedestrian central square of Milan, Italy, connected to the main square of Milan, Piazza del Duomo, by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II passage. It is named after the renowned Teatro alla Scala opera house, which occupies ...
'' in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
some days before his visit to
Bergamo
Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...
), is not further pursued by Swales. Although Freud visited Trafoi on the 8th of August 1898, Swales doubts whether Freud received a message on the suicide of one of his patients.
Freud neglected his own observation
![Luca signorelli, cappella di san brizio, predica e punizione dell'anticristo 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Luca_signorelli%2C_cappella_di_san_brizio%2C_predica_e_punizione_dell%27anticristo_01.jpg)
Freud in his analysis did not use the fact that he remembered very well a picture of the painter in the lower left corner of one of the frescos. The picture, sort of a signature, was thus a third substitute to the forgotten name Signorelli. Molnar (p.84) remarks that ''Sig''norelli and ''Sig''mund share the same syllable, making Freud's parapraxis an act of self-forgetting.
The "signature" can be interpreted as a reference to the Latin verb ''signare'' and this word, instead of Freud's ''signore'', then leads to a simple analysis of the Signorelli parapraxis.
First the association Signorelli - Botticelli and furthermore the association:
[Engels, 2006, p. 66-69.]
Signorelli - signare - Sieg / signum - trofeo - Trafoi - Boltraffio
It was Kraepelin who first pointed at the Trafoi - trofeo association.
There seems to be no more need for the Bosnia-Herzegovina associations (''Bo'' and ''Herr'') Freud himself introduced. In the alternative to Freud's analysis the suicide message in Trafoi remains an important point to understand the parapraxis (this message being a blow to Freud's
self-esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
).
A methodological error
Freud in trying to connect Signorelli to Boltraffio makes a methodological error. In his chain he admits 'death and sexuality' as a term linking stories from Turcs about death and sexuality with the death (suicide) caused by sexual problems of his patient. But 'death and sexuality' is a
hypernym or umbrella term. Hypernymes can link terms in a large semantic field and so induce vagueness in the connection. As a chain is as strong as its weakest link, introducing a hypernym weakens the chain. Freud had to introduce the hypernym because already the first term ''Signor(e)'' in his chain was in error. Freud simply presents no criteria by which to judge a linking chain. Clearly precision of linking must be such a criterion.
Trying to find associative connections is also a problem occurring in dream interpretation and so Kraepelin's Trafoi-dream might be an undermining of Freud's practice to solely trust in free association. Freud was not amused by Kraepelin's implicit critique and just cited in his literature list in the second (1909) edition of ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' an article on Kraepelin's dream speech. In this article Kraepelin's Trafoi-dream is lacking, whereas in Kraepelin's monograph, containing five more examples, it is present. In a foreword to the second edition Freud expresses his anger that psychiatrists did not cite his ''Dream Interpretation''.
See also
*
Dream speech
Dream speech (in German ''Traumsprache'') is internal speech in which errors occur during a dream. The term was coined by Emil Kraepelin in his 1906 monograph titled ''Über Sprachstörungen im Traume'' ("On Language Disturbances in Dreams"). Th ...
References
Sources
* Engels, Huub (2006). ''Emil Kraepelins Traumsprache 1908-1926.''
* Timpanaro, S. (1976). The ''Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism''. London: NLB.
* Swales, P. (2003). Freud, Death and Sexual Pleasures. On the Psychical Mechanism of Dr. Sigm. Freud. ''Arc de Cercle'', 1, 4-74.
Further reading
* Molnar, M. (1994). Reading the Look. In Sander, Gilman, Birmele, Geller & Greenberg (ed.): ''Reading Freud's Reading.'' pp. 77–90. New York: Oxford.
* Ooijen, B. van. (1996). Vowel mutability and lexical selection in English: Evidence from a word reconstruction task. ''Memory & Cognition'', 24, 573-583. Ooijen shows that in word reconstruction tasks e.g. the non-word ''kebra'' is more readily substituted by ''cobra'' than by ''zebra''. This is what is meant by 'vowel mutability.'
* Owens, M.E. (2004). Forgetting Signorelli: Monstruous Visions of the Resurrection of the Dead. Muse: scholarly journals online.
{{Luca Signorelli
Psychoanalytic terminology
Freudian psychology