The original ‘slightest alteration’ underlying Freud’s intangible but radical revolution can be conveniently dated to 1898, when Freud, travelling to Herzegovina, turned to ask a travelling companion whether he had ever seen the famous frescoes of the ‘Four Last Things’ in Orvieto Cathedral, painted by-----: the painter’s name would not come; ‘Botticelli’ and ‘Boltraffio’ came to mind instead. Freud’s account of why he had failed to recall the right name, ‘Signorelli’, contains the core of his later theories. ‘Signorelli’ had been replaced through a series of transformations: ‘Signor-’ into ‘Herr’, recalling both Herzegovina-and-Bosnia and an anecdote about attitudes to death and sex in which the sentence ‘Sir (Herr), what is there to be said?’ had been the punch-line. This anecdote had linked to an earlier incident when Freud, while staying at Trafoi in the Tyrol, had heard of a patient’s suicide because of an incurable sexual disorder. Thus, the ‘forgotten’ ‘Signorelli’ produced ‘Herzegovina-and-Bosnia’, ‘Bo-snia’ conflated with ‘-elli’ to produce ‘Bo-ttic-elli’, ‘Herzegovina’, via ‘Herr’, indirectly produced ‘Trafoi’, which conflated with ‘Bo-snia’ to produce ‘Bo-l-traffio’.