# Freud's Trip to Orvieto: The Great Doctor's Unresolved Confrontation with Antisemitism, Death, and Homoeroticism; His Passion for Paintings; And the W - Hardcover

by **Nicholas Fox Weber** (Author)

"\[An\] unusual meditation on sex, death, art, and Jewishness. . . . Weber weaves in musings on his own sexual and religious experiences, creating a freewheeling psychoanalytic document whose approach would surely delight the doctor, even if its conclusions might surprise him." --**_New Yorker_**

"_Freud's Trip to Orvieto_ is at once profound and wonderfully diverse, and as gripping as any detective story. Nicholas Fox Weber mixes psychoanalysis, art history, and the personal with an intricacy and spiritedness that Freud himself would have admired." --**John Banville**, author of _The Sea_ and _The Blue Guitar_

"This is an ingenious and fascinating reading of Freud's response to Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto. It is also a meditation on Jewish identity, and on masculinity, memory, and the power of the image. It is filled with intelligence, wit, and clear-eyed analysis not only of the paintings themselves, but how we respond to them in all their startling sexuality and invigorating beauty." --**Colm Tóibín**, author of _Brooklyn_ and _Nora Webster_

After a visit to the cathedral at Orvieto in Italy, Sigmund Freud deemed Luca Signorelli's frescoes the greatest artwork he'd ever encountered; yet, a year later, he couldn't recall the artist's name. When the name came back to him, the images he had so admired vanished from his mind's eye. This is known as the "Signorelli parapraxis" in the annals of Freudian psychoanalysis and is a famous example from Freud's own life of his principle of repressed memory. What was at the bottom of this? There have been many theories on the subject, but Nicholas Fox Weber is the first to study the actual Signorelli frescoes for clues.

What Weber finds in these extraordinary Renaissance paintings provides unexpected insight into this famously confounding incident in Freud's biography. As he sounds the depths of Freud's feelings surrounding his masculinity and Jewish identity, Weber is drawn back into his own past, including his memories of an adolescent obsession with a much older woman.

_Freud's Trip to Orvieto_ is an intellectual mystery with a very personal, intimate dimension. Through rich illustrations, Weber evokes art's singular capacity to provoke, destabilize, and enchant us, as it did Freud, and awaken our deepest memories, fears, and desires.

**Nicholas Fox Weber** is the director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and author of fourteen books, including biographies of Balthus and Le Corbusier. He has written for the _New Yorker_, _New York Times_, _Los Angeles Times_, _Wall Street Journal_, _Le Monde_, _ARTnews_, _Town & Country_, and _Vogue_, among other publications.

### Author Biography

**Nicholas Fox Weber** is the director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and founder and president of Le Korsa, a nonprofit organization devoted to medical care, education, and the arts in isolated villages in rural Senegal. He is the author of fourteen books, including _Freud's Trip to Orvieto_, biographies of Balthus and Le Corbusier, and numerous exhibition catalogs. His writing has also appeared in the _New Yorker_, _New York Times_, _Los Angeles Times_, _Wall Street Journal_, _Le Monde_, _ARTnews_, _Town & Country_, and _Vogue_, among other publications. He is married to the novelist Katharine Weber, has two adult daughters, and lives in Connecticut, Paris, and southwest Ireland.

**Number of Pages:** 352

**Dimensions:** 1.2 x 9.1 x 6.2 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** May 09, 2017

## Details

- **Price:** 26.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

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- Freud's Trip to Orvieto: The Great Doctor's Unresolved Confrontation with Antisemitism, Death, and Homoeroticism; His Passion for Paintings; And the W - Hardcover

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