The symmetric signature

This is the author's Ph.D. thesis. We introduce two related invariants for local (and standard graded) rings called differential and syzygy symmetric signature. These are defined by looking at the maximal free splitting of the module of K\"ahler differentials and of the the top-dimensional syzygy module of the residue field respectively. We study and compute them for different classes of rings: two-dimensional ADE singularities, two-dimensional cyclic singularities, and cones over plane elliptic curves (for the differential symmetric signature). The values obtained coincide with the F-signature of such rings in positive characteristic. The thesis contains also a short survey on the Auslander correspondence for quotient singularities.