Freud continued, “I assume that the stream of thoughts concerning the customs of the Turks in Bosnia, etc., was able to disturb the next thought, because I withdrew my attention from it before it came to an end.

When one is compelled to inform them that there is no help for the patient, they answer: ‘Herr (Sir), what can I say? I know that if he could be saved, you would save him.’ In these sentences alone we can find the words and names: Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Herr, which may be inserted in an association series between Signorelli, Botticelli, and Boltraffio.” Freud recounts, “before I asked my travelling companion if he had been in Orvieto, we had been discussing the the customs of the Turks living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had related what I heard from a colleague who was practicing medicine among them, namely, that they show full confidence in the physician and complete submission to fate. One was a conversation about Turks that brought up the topic of sexuality. There were two subjects that interfered with his recall of the correct name. When the correct name was given to him by an outsider, he discovered how the displacement caused him to bring up the wrong names. The name was Signorelli, but instead Freud recalled Botticelli and Boltraffio. Freud struggled to remember the name of a master who made frescoes of the Last Judgement in the Orvieto Cathedral in Italy. Despite the then current psychological interpretations that these are only accidents because both the words and names sound similar, Freud felt there was more to explore. “There is no doubt that there are cases of name-forgetting that proceed in a much simpler way…besides the simple forgetting of proper names, there is another forgetting which is motivated by repression.” Freud recounts a detailed analysis of a conversation with a stranger on a holiday trip from Ragusa, modern day Dubrovnik, to a small town near Herzegovina. Signorelli, Botticelli, and Boltraffio.įreud begins by looking at the forgetting of words including names, and their sometimes incorrect recall.

These he called Parapraxes.ĭespite criticisms from psychologists, his book became popular and was his first vehicle to spread ideas of psychoanalysis to a wider audience. In this instance he chose to examine his forgetfulness, bungled intentions, and slips of the tongue, that so many of us suffer on a daily basis. Freud continued his self-analysis in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and like in most of his works, he explored his personal experiences to understand others.

The psychopathology of everyday life