Quinodoz 2010

How translations of Freud’s writings have influencedFrench psychoanalytic thinking1

Jean-Michel Quinodoz

53a Chemin des Fourches, 1223 Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland –[email protected]

(Final version accepted 26 October 2008)

Translations of Freud ’s writings have had a lasting influence on psychoanalyticthinking in France. They have, all the same, given rise to some conceptual distor-tions as regards the ego and the id, the ideal ego and the ego ideal, and splitting.Lacan’s ‘return to Freud ’ certainly reawakened interest in Freud ’s writings; how-ever, by focusing mainly on Freud ’s early work, Lacan’s personal reading playeddown the importance of the texts Freud wrote after his metapsychological papersof 1915. The fact that there is no French edition of Freud ’s complete works makesit difficult for French psychoanalysts to put them in a proper context with respectto his developments as a whole. The Oeuvres Compl�tes [Complete Works]edition may well turn out to be the equivalent of the Standard Edition, but it isas yet far from complete – and, since the vocabulary employed is far removedfrom everyday language, those volumes already in print tend to make the generalpublic less likely to read Freud. In this paper, the author evokes certain questionsthat go beyond the French example, such as the impact that translations havewithin other psychoanalytic contexts. Now that English has become more or lessthe lingua franca for communication between psychoanalysts, we have to face upto new challenges if we are to avoid a twofold risk: that of mere standardization,as well as that of a ‘Babelization’ of psychoanalysis.

Keywords: French language, historical dimension, International Journal of Psycho-analysis, L’Annee Psychanalytique Internationale, Œuvres Completes de Freud,psychanalyse, translating Freud, translations

Almost 100 years of vicissitudes

I would like to examine in this paper the repercussions of the translations ofFreud’s writings on psychoanalytic thinking in France. This study concernsnot only the impact of these translations from a strictly linguistic point ofview, but also the consequences they have on the practice, technique andtheory of psychoanalysts in France. Just as Freud’s theories were to someextent ‘Anglicized’ as a result of Strachey’s Standard Edition translation,they have over the past decades become ‘Gallicized’, an influence of whichFrench psychoanalysts themselves seem to be relatively unaware.

French psychoanalysis is known and appreciated throughout the world, inparticular thanks to its exploration of the neuroses, of Freud’s metapsycho-logy and of the relationship between linguistics and psychoanalysis. What isless well known, however, is the fact that the ups and downs of the transla-tions of Freud’s writings have contributed to a considerable extent to

1Translated by David Alcorn.

Int J Psychoanal (2010) 91:695–716 doi: 10.1111/j.1745-8315.2008.00117.x

Copyright ª 2009 Institute of PsychoanalysisPublished by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the Institute of Psychoanalysis

�e International Journal of

shaping the pattern of psychoanalysis in France as we know it today. Fromthat point of view, two factors have played a decisive role: firstly, the factthat, as yet, there is no complete edition of Freud’s writings in French thatwould give uninitiated readers an overall view of how they developed overtime; and, secondly, Lacan’s obvious preference for Freud’s investigation ofthe neuroses led French psychoanalysts to pay more heed to that early partof Freud’s work than to anything posterior to his Papers on metapsychology(Freud, 1915–1917). The ‘Gallicization’ of Freud’s theory is a sufficientlyfar-reaching topic for it to deserve a more in-depth study. However, giventhe complicated nature of the issues involved, I have decided on a more sub-jective approach based essentially on my experience of working with psycho-analysts in the context of the International Psychoanalytical Association.2

In addition, my knowledge of foreign languages, in particular, of German,and my familiarity with many of the various contemporary psychoanalyticmovements have enabled me to take a broader view of French psychoanaly-sis. That is also why I wanted to have my ideas on this topic published inan international review, in order to bring a ‘third party’ reference into mythoughts about French psychoanalysis. I hope that this paper will encouragecolleagues whose native language is not French and who belong to otherpsychoanalytic schools of thought to think about these matters.

Over and above the example of French psychoanalysis, this paper high-lights not only the linguistic but also the intercultural challenges that con-front us in our discussions among psychoanalysts. The widespread use ofEnglish does have its advantages in terms of means of communication forour discipline, but its very predominance could well push into the back-ground the specific nature of minority schools of thought in psychoanalysisand intensify its dissipation. For these reasons, I think that, in our discus-sions, we shall have to make more room for questions concerning transla-tions and their implications for communication within psychoanalysis.

FIRST PERIOD: MANY TRANSLATIONS, BUT INACCURATEONES (1920–1956)

The earliest translations of Freud’s writings into French

It was in 1920, in Geneva, that the first translation into French of one ofFreud’s writings3 was published – Five lectures on psycho-analysis (Freud,1910a [1909]), translated by Yves Le Lay, with a foreword by Edouard Clap-ar�de, who was both a medical practitioner and a psychologist. That trans-lation, of course, appeared in print some 25 years after Studies on Hysteria(Breuer and Freud, 1895d [1893–95]) was published. If we examine theClapar�de edition, we can see that the translator sometimes took great

2The French-language societies involved are the Paris Psychoanalytical Society [Soci�t� Psychanalytiquede Paris, SPP], the French Psychoanalytical Association [Association Psychanalytique de France, APF],and the Belgian, Canadian and Swiss Psychoanalytical Societies [Soci�t� Suisse de Psychanalyse, SSPsa].3In 1913, an Italian periodical, Scientia, had published a French translation of The claims of psycho-analysis to scientific interest [1913j], which seems to have gone unnoticed at the time (Assoun, 1980).

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liberties with Freud’s original text – and this is a common feature of theseearly translations. From 1922 on, several publishers brought out other trans-lations, carried out by different translators – first of all, Payot with S. Jan-k�l�vitch, then Gallimard with B. Reverchon-Jouve, and Alcan withI. Meyerson. It is worth pointing out that, from 1920 to 1927, none of thesetranslations was carried out by practising psychoanalysts. Subsequently,after several trips to Vienna, Marie Bonaparte translated and encouragedthe translation of several of Freud’s papers, which were published by Gal-limard; some of these were carried out with the help of Marie Bonaparte’ssecretary, Anne Berman. Later still, between 1928 and 1935, several psycho-analysts translated other papers by Freud, which were published in theRevue FranÅaise de Psychanalyse.

Freud’s ideas met with much resistance

In France, there was a great deal of resistance towards Freud’s conceptionsso that it was difficult for them to penetrate into French thinking. Therewas first of all the neurological attitude prevalent in French psychiatry, aswell as the philosophical tradition inherited from Descartes. To those obsta-cles was added the tendency of the translators to modify foreign-languagetexts in order to adapt them to French ways of thinking; that tendency wasexpressed as a desire to ‘Gallicize’ Freud, in other words, to create what infact would amount to a psychoanalysis ‘� la franÅaise’. ‘‘Basically, the ideawas to rewrite Freud so that the French might understand him – and thisamounted to modifying and even falsifying his thinking’’ (Bourguignon andBourguignon, 1983, p. 1275). We should also not forget that the heighten-ing of nationalism that prevailed during and after World War I gave rise toa great deal of suspicion as regards any ideas that sounded ‘Germanic’.Nonetheless, Freud’s ideas were warmly welcomed in the French-speakingregion of Switzerland, which is at the crossroads of German and Frenchculture, so that the first psychoanalysts from that region became in fact thefirst to ‘carry’ Freud’s ideas over the frontier. To mention a few names:Raymond de Saussure, who was analysed by Freud in 1920, Henri Flour-noy, Charles Odier and John Leuba were among the founder members notonly of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society but also of the Revue FranÅaise dePsychanalyse and were instrumental in organizing the first Congressof French-speaking psychoanalysts, which was held in Geneva in 1926(Quinodoz, 2003).

Terminology still in its early stages

The various translators very soon came up against problems of terminology.For that reason, a Linguistic Committee for Harmonizing French Psycho-analytic Vocabulary was set up in 1927. There was immediate agreement ontranslating Verdr�ngung [repression] by ‘refoulement’, Besetzung [cathexis] by‘investissement’, and for Trieb [drive], ‘pulsion’ was preferred to ‘aimance’[‘pulling towards’]. Das Ich [the ego] gave rise to some hesitation between ‘lemoi’, ‘l’ego’ or ‘le je’ [the I] – in the end, ‘le moi’ was preferred. For das Es[the id], there were also several ideas: ‘le soi’ [the self], ‘cela’ [that] and ‘le

Translations of Freud’s writings and French psychoanalytical thinking 697

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Åa’ – initially this was in fact the term chosen, but one year later, afterFreud’s opinion was sought, ‘le soi’ was adopted. I shall come back to thispoint later in this paper. Some other terms were agreed upon, but the Com-mittee was short-lived: in 1928, after only four meetings, it was disbanded.The translators were asked to refer to Marie Bonaparte who, given herongoing contact with Freud, undertook to co-ordinate psychoanalyticvocabulary in French.

Few psychoanalysts, many translations

If we consider the translations published between 1920 and 1938, we can seethat a considerable number of Freud’s major writings were available toFrench-speaking readers before the outbreak of World War II. Eighteen outof the 22 volumes of Freud’s writings had appeared in print, plus approxi-mately 30 articles, published mainly in the Revue FranÅaise de Psychanalyse.The inventory drawn up by R. Dufresne (1971) quite clearly shows that thetranslations of Freud’s writings into French were much more numerous andwent much further back in time than is generally thought. A. and O. Bour-guignon drew the conclusion that:

In spite of all our quite legitimate reservations, the first twenty years of translationwork have undoubtedly been positive. Of course, it will all have to be done overagain; but without all the work, no matter how imperfect, done by those pioneersin the inter-war period, we would be completely at a loss.

(1983, p. 1265)

By 1938, only four of Freud’s books remained to be translated intoFrench: Studies on Hysteria, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Moses andMonotheism, and An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. The outbreak of WorldWar II in 1939 put a stop to all editorial work on psychoanalysis for moreor less the following ten years. In 1948, Anne Berman’s translation of Mosesand Monotheism was published by Gallimard. Thereafter, she translated thefollowing papers, which were published by the Presses Universitaires deFrance in their ‘Library of Psychoanalysis’ series, under the editorship ofDaniel Lagache: An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (in 1950), La techniquepsychanalytique [The Technique of Psychoanalysis] (in 1953), Studies onHysteria (in 1956) and a selection of Freud’s letters to Fliess under the titleLa naissance de la psychanalyse [The Birth of Psychoanalysis] (also in 1956).In addition, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, translated by P. Jury andE. Fraenkel, was published in 1951, so that, by the mid-1950s, all Freud’swritings were available to French-speaking readers.

On the whole, not particularly successful

Translations that were somewhat imprecise and at times a longway off the mark

They were not all bad, but some were better than others. On the whole,nevertheless, they were ‘‘outrageously inexact’’ as Bourguignon et al. (1989,p. 8) put it. The lack of precision in most of them introduced certain distor-

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tions in the transmission of Freud’s thinking that even today have an impacton French psychoanalysis. The different translators of that period took sig-nificant liberties with Freud’s original text. Admittedly, it is often difficultto resist the temptation to ‘disconnect’ from the original text when facedwith a really difficult problem of translation, but here the ‘betrayals’ weremany in number:

[ ... ] mistakes in the terms used, words missed out, passages omitted, misunder-standings and misinterpretations, comments and paraphrases, avoidance of difficultyare all more or less recurrent, depending on the translator. But what could beexpected, given that they were not psychoanalysts and that psychoanalysts, whothemselves had not followed the same intellectual itinerary as Freud, were unable tograsp all the richness and complexity of his thinking.

(Bourguignon and Bourguignon, 1983, pp. 1275–6)

More than 50 years later, many of those incomplete translations were stillin circulation because no more recent translations had been published, lead-ing Dufresne to issue the following warning: ‘‘[These translations] run therisk of creating misunderstandings; they are hardly worth using, except asan initial reading or a quick re-reading, unless the reader refers constantlyto the original version or to the English translation in the Standard Edition’’(Dufresne, 1983, p. 1248).

Ignoring the chronology of Freud’s writings

We all know how important it is to have some idea of the chronology ofFreud’s writings in order to understand how his thinking developed. How-ever, most of the translations of this early period mention neither the yearin which the original German version was published nor make any biblio-graphical reference to the German original. How were French-speakingreaders to make sense of this? For those who wanted to situate a given textin the chronological development of Freud’s writings and thereby take intoaccount the various reworkings that he had brought to his theory, their onlypossible recourse was to refer to the Gesammelte Werke (1940–1952) and ⁄ orto the Standard Edition (1953–1974). Only a small number of psychoanalystswere sufficiently familiar with German and ⁄ or English to be able to do this,and in France only a very few did what Colette Chiland and some othersdid: learn German with the sole aim of reading Freud in the original lan-guage. For those who had access only to the French versions, a long andpatient work of personal research was needed if they were to acquire anoverall view of Freud’s writings. Even today, the question of the chronologyof Freud’s papers has still not been resolved, because not all volumes of hisOeuvres Compl�tes have appeared in print and their publication does not infact follow any chronological order.

I have already mentioned the fact that, from the outset, several publishersshared the translation rights to Freud’s major texts – especially Payot, Gal-limard and, after World War II, the Presses Universitaires de France. Shar-ing the rights in this way meant that several editions could be published,thus hindering the chronological editing of Freud’s writings as well as delay-ing for some considerable time any agreement as to the publication of his



Complete Works. I shall return to that point later. In addition, many ofFreud’s other papers were published under various titles in psychoanalyticand literary reviews, so that readers found it difficult to find their bearings.Several papers appeared in many different translations – such as DieVerneinung [Negation], of which there were almost a dozen differentversions! – and, of course, the ‘pirate’ editions and duplications only addedto this sense of fragmentation. The ‘anarchy’ that was a typical feature ofFrench-language editions of Freud’s writings at that time led, naturallyenough, to gaps in the knowledge that French-speaking readers had ofpsychoanalytic theory, as the French-Canadian psychoanalyst, R. Dufresne,pointed out:

Under such conditions, who among students beginning their training, colleagues inthe provinces or based abroad or even in Paris, psychologists, medical practitioners,philosophers and the wider readership could possibly have proper access to Freud’swritings in French? [ ... ] They are thus deprived of any access to Freud. [ ... ]Translating what he wrote is not enough in itself. It is important that their distribu-tion lives up to the oeuvre the inheritors of which we claim to be.

(Dufresne, 1983, p. 1252)

Long-term consequences

Generally speaking, the first translation of some important material has along-term influence on the minds of its readers, even though improved ver-sions may follow. The first readers tend to remain faithful to their initialimpression and to the notes that they made at that time. As a result, certainunfortunate terminological choices made when Das Ich und das Es [The Egoand the Id] was translated in 1927 still had repercussions decades later. I amthinking here in particular of the translation of ‘das Es’ by ‘le soi’ [the self],of the confusion between ‘ego ideal’ and ‘ideal ego’, and of the translationof Spaltung by ‘morcellement’ [fragmenting] rather than by ‘clivage’ [split-ting].

Le moi et le soi [The ego and the self]

Published by Freud in 1923, Das Ich und das Es was translated by Jank�l�v-itch into French under the title Le moi et le soi. It is true that the exacttranslation of Es into French can give rise to some hesitation, but the choiceof ‘soi’ could only confuse matters, since ‘soi’ is a reflexive pronoun: self inEnglish, and selbst in German. The error was corrected 24 years later, whenthe word ‘Åa’ replaced ‘soi’, so that nowadays the French title of the book ismuch more appropriate: Le moi et le Åa (Freud, 1923b). But the harm wasdone. Translating ‘das Es’ by ‘le soi’ not only led to terminological confu-sion but also made the structural theory that Freud was introducing muchmore difficult to understand. That confusion was to the detriment not onlyof the notion of the ‘Åa’ [id], but also to that of the ‘soi’ [the self]. This goessome way to explaining why the idea of ‘le soi’ has never been consideredby French psychoanalysts to be a psychoanalytic concept in the strict senseof the word (Haynal, 2001), contrary to that of selbst – a term which,

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according to Guttman et al. (1980), can be found some 2975 times inFreud’s writings – and that of the self in English-language terminology(Makari, 2008). Subsequently, the criticism Lacan levelled at Ego Psycho-logy only increased the reservations that French psychoanalysts had withrespect to Freud’s structural theory – which indeed is called in French his‘second topographical theory’ [‘seconde topique’]. I do not mean to imply,of course, that French-speaking psychoanalysts discount the importance ofthe structural theory – but how many times have I heard colleagues saythat, when he introduced his ‘second topographical theory’, Freudabandoned all reference to the concept of unconscious, preconscious andconscious systems, as though he had deliberately replaced the topographicaltheory with the structural one, as Green (2006) has argued. Inaddition, I think that the emphasis on the idea of ‘je’ [I] rather than on thatof ‘moi’ [ego] pushed into the background the conflicts between ego, super-ego and id, as well as the part played by unconscious guilt feelings.

Confusion between ‘ego ideal’ and ‘ideal ego’

In his translation of the terms Idealich and Ichideal, unfortunate conceptualerrors were made by Jank�l�vitch. He had, it is true, correctly identified theappropriate terms: ‘moi id�al’ [ideal ego] and ‘id�al du moi’ [ego ideal];unfortunately, he often made the mistake of using one of those terms inplaces where the other would have been more appropriate. It was thus inevi-table that any reader who did not have access either to the German originalor to the Standard Edition text would feel confused. For Freud, the ego ideal(or superego) is the heir of the Oedipus complex, but Jank�l�vitch writes:‘‘The ideal ego thus represents the heritage of the Oedipus complex...’’ (Lemoi et le soi (Freud [1923b], 1927, p. 26). That terminological error gave riseto a conceptual one, because it is not narcissism (the ideal ego) that is theheir of the Oedipus complex but the ego ideal or superego, as Freud actuallywrote. Another example of the long-term effect of the confusion betweenideal ego and ego ideal is the book written by Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel(1975), L’id�al du moi [The Ego Ideal ], in which she describes phenomenathat have to do with the ‘ideal ego’ but attributes them to the ‘ego ideal’.That error came from the fact that Chasseguet-Smirgel based her study onlyon Jank�l�vitch’s translation – although published almost 50 years earlier, itis the only one that she mentions in her bibliography. In the 1990s, Chasseg-uet-Smirgel replied to a question put to her on that point by Dani-elle Quinodoz, saying that she had no intention of correcting those errors.In 2004, the book was reissued under a new title: ‘La maladie de l’id�alit�’:Essai psychanalytique sur l’id�al du moi [The ‘Malady of Ideality’: A Psycho-analytic Essay on the Ego Ideal].

‘Splitting’ and ‘denial’: Two concepts long neglected

The translation of Spaltung [splitting] by ‘morcellement’ [fragmenting] gaverise to many years of neglect of Freud’s idea of ‘splitting’ and of ‘splittingof the ego’ in French psychoanalysis. In her French translation of An Out-line of Psycho-Analysis in 1949, Anne Berman translated the German



words Spaltung and Ichspaltung by ‘fragmenting’ and ‘fragmenting of theego’ instead of by ‘splitting’ and ‘splitting of the ego’. It was only in theseventh edition, published 25 years later, that this was corrected, so thatthe French words ‘clivage’ [splitting] and ‘clivage du moi’ [splitting of theego] then appeared, thereby introducing these concepts to French readers(e.g. Freud [1940a[1939]], 1973, pp. 80, 82). That terminological and con-ceptual error contributed to a long-lasting neglect of the idea of ‘splitting’in Freud’s theory. I remember a colleague of mine saying in the 1980s thatthe word ‘clivage’ that I was using was nowhere to be found in Freud’swritings and that the concept was a feature of Kleinian terminology –which, coming from him, implied harsh criticism of Melanie Klein’s discov-eries! In addition, such inexactitudes explain the fact that some Frenchpsychoanalysts are still of the opinion that splitting is not a defence mech-anism, but is simply the passive outcome of a denial of reality, as Canestri(1990) has noted.

THE SECOND PERIOD: THE ENDLESS WAIT FOR FREUD’SCOMPLETE WORKS (1956–1988)

Many psychoanalysts, few translations

The second period began in 1956 with the publication in French of Studieson Hysteria and lasted more than 30 years – until 1988, in fact, the year inwhich was published volume 13 of the Oeuvres Compl�tes de Freud. Psych-analyse [Freud’s Complete Works: Psychoanalysis], the inaugural volume of aseries that is to number 20 in all. In the period 1920–1956, a small numberof psychoanalysts produced a great many translations; paradoxicallyenough, the dramatic rise in the number of psychoanalysts in France, begin-ning in the 1950s, saw relatively few new translations of Freud’s writings orrevisions of those that already existed. The lack of editorial productivitywhich characterizes those three decades was due mainly to the schisms thattook place in 1953 and in 1963 within the psychoanalytic movement inFrance, to the increasing influence of Jacques Lacan, and to the endless waitfor the French version of Freud’s Complete Works to be set in motion.These divisions contributed to an atmosphere of uncertainty, not particu-larly auspicious for an undertaking such as the translation of all Freud’swritings on psychoanalysis.

Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’: A partial return

The accent is unquestionably on Freud’s early period

The increasing influence of Jacques Lacan on French psychoanalysis was amajor event throughout that period. Lacan quite rightly argued that hastyreadings and faulty translations meant that Freud had been misunderstood;he therefore recommended a ‘return to Freud’, i.e. a return to Freud’soriginal texts. That step was based also on Lacan’s criticism of the leadersof the International Psychoanalytical Association, and in particular of

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H. Hartmann, E. Kris and R. Loewenstein (the latter had been Lacan’sanalyst); according to Lacan, they misrepresented Freud’s thinking. In addi-tion, Lacan claimed that his own ideas, based on the relationship betweenpsychoanalysis and language, were the only true way of ‘returning toFreud’s thinking’.

In fact, the ‘return to Freud’ advocated by Lacan was not a return to‘all’ Freud’s writings, as a cursory glance would have us believe, but areturn to Freud’s early period (Quinodoz, 2005, p. 53). It is true, of course,that Lacan was familiar with the whole range of Freud’s writings, and it isto his credit that he did highlight a certain number of aspects that untilthen had been misunderstood or underestimated. Nonetheless, he took ashis basis only the texts that Freud had written between 1895 and 1915,among which were Studies on Hysteria (1895d [1893–95]), The Interpreta-tion of Dreams (1900a), Jokes and their relation to the unconscious (1905c)and the papers on metapsychology written in 1915; in Lacan’s view, inthese latter papers, Freud’s thinking reached its zenith. Basically, all thesetexts emphasize the psychic mechanisms that come into play in neuroticstates. For Lacan, the neuroses were the indication par excellence forpsychoanalytic treatment, since neurotic patients are able to grasp the sym-bolic meaning of language. In short, from a theoretical point of view, theLacanian conception of psychoanalysis is based essentially on repression,the topographical model of the mind (conscious, preconscious and uncon-scious systems), the first theory of the instinctual drives (the pleasure–unpleasure principle), the theory of seduction and the positive dimensionof the transference. It takes hardly any notice of conflicts between ego, idand superego, of splitting, or of certain other aspects that I shall discusslater in this paper.

Why so few translations by the Lacanians?

It would have been reasonable to expect that Lacan’s recommended ‘returnto Freud’ could have acted as a stimulus for new translations. Paradoxicallyenough, this was not the case. The sometimes excessive liberties that Lacantook with Freud’s original texts may go some way to explaining that situa-tion. His understanding of what Freud had written was often surprising, giv-ing rise to misinterpretations and a peculiar kind of terminology:

We shall say nothing about the fate he reserved for desire, raised to the level of anomnipotent Desire, even though that one word in French translates more than halfa dozen German words (Begierde, Drang, Gel�ste, Gier, Lust, Sehnsucht, Verlangen,Wunsch, W�nschen – als W�nsche haben) – and there are indisputable nuances ofmeaning between them. It is even more serious, in our view, when we see the wordd�rive [drift] each time that Freud writes Triebe [drive; now translated in French as‘pulsion’]. [ ... ] These misinterpretations are by no means innocent, because theycall into question a major aspect of metapsychology. [ ... ] It is therefore easy tounderstand that, disconcerted by this approach to Freud’s writings, Lacan’s follow-ers hesitated to commit themselves to carrying out any translations – the wholeundertaking became difficult and indeed in certain cases impossible.

(Bourguignon and Bourguignon, 1983, p. 1277)



Minimizing the second phase of Freud’s work

In Lacan’s view, Freud’s post-1915 writings are above all a reflection of thetherapeutic impasses he found himself in, particularly in the psychoanalytictreatment of depression, of psychosis and of the perversions. For example,Lacan felt that Mourning and melancholia (Freud, 1917e[1915]) had no placein psychoanalytic thinking even though it was in that paper that Freuddescribed the fundamental intrapsychic conflict that lay at the heart ofdepression (the term used at that time was ‘melancholia’). I asked one ofmy supervisors, Olivier Flournoy, a pupil of Lacan’s, why that paper waslooked down upon. According to Flournoy, both he and Lacan felt that thedenial of separation from and loss of the object in melancholia or depres-sion had to do with a real object, and that any conflict having to do withreality was a matter, not for psychoanalysis, but for psychiatry. On muchthe same basis, Lacan criticized Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Freud,1926d[1925]) in his seminar on anxiety, and excluded the idea of separationanxiety from the field of psychoanalysis: ‘‘In contradiction to common expe-rience, on several occasions Lacan denies the reality of separation anxiety’’(Diatkine, 2006, p. 1052).

Lacan took little notice of the idea of the ‘ego’, preferring that of the‘I’; the ego henceforth belonged to the Imaginary dimension. It is under-standable that, since it was impossible to have access to translations of allof Freud’s writings, only a few psychoanalysts in France were able to con-textualize these discussions from a chronological perspective of Freud’stheory.

Freud no later than 1915: A specifically French attitude?

From that point of view, there is a marked contrast between the conceptionsprevalent among French psychoanalysts and those found in other countries.To mention just one example: psychoanalysts belonging to the British schoollay their main emphasis on Freud’s post-1915 developments, without, all thesame, rejecting his earlier contributions. I am thinking here, in particular, ofobject relations, of the part played by projection and introjection, of thevicissitudes of the affects of love and hate (Mourning and melancholia, op.cit.), and of the conflict between the life and death drives (Beyond the Plea-sure Principle [1920g]). To these conceptions, we must add the structuralmodel of the mind (The Ego and the Id [1923b]), the part played by anxietyabout separation from and loss of the object (Inhibitions, Symptoms andAnxiety [1926d[1925]]) and the concepts of denial and of splitting of the ego(Fetishism [1927e], An Outline of Psycho-Analysis [1940a[1938]]). The factthat so little importance was given by our French colleagues to that secondperiod of Freud’s writings no doubt made it difficult for them to grasp thefact that what Melanie Klein and her followers were doing was an extensionof Freud’s own work, suggesting solutions in certain areas that Freud him-self had left open.

Nevertheless, for some time now these two schools of thought – whicheverything seemed to separate – have been drawing closer together. On the

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one hand, although some French psychoanalysts still clearly prefer, fromboth a theoretical and a technical point of view, Freud’s early period, thusreserving classic psychoanalytic treatment for neurotic patients, they aremore and more interested in the kind of themes that British psychoanalystsare working on, particularly as regards patients reputed to be ‘difficultcases’; and, on the other, British psychoanalysts are paying closer attentionto what their French counterparts have discovered about the neuroses andpsychosomatic disorders.

Thirty years of prevarication, waiting for the Complete Works

The failure of several attempts

There were many attempts at launching this ambitious project; the idea ofsuch an undertaking was already germinating since as early as themid-1950s. Several groups of translators had begun working on the project,particularly under the direction of J. Laplanche, J-B. Pontalis and A. Bour-guignon, assisted by the Germanist P. Cotet. They soon came up againstthe fact that they required the assent of all three publishers who held rightsto the French translations of Freud’s writings. In 1966, after many years ofnegotiations, the publishers came to an agreement. At that point, however,it became clear that there were two contradictory views of what such atranslation should be. One view was held by M. Robert and M. deM’Uzan, both members of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, whileD. Lagache, J. Laplanche and J-B. Pontalis, all members of the FrenchPsychoanalytical Association, had a completely different concept. In 1967,thanks to the mediation of the International Psychoanalytical Association,Laplanche and Pontalis were entrusted with the task of editing the Com-plete Works; they agreed to work with both the Paris Society and theFrench Association in doing so. Further difficulties emerged, however, asregards the actual translations, because the undertaking soon proved to bemuch greater and more complex than initially thought: almost every one ofthe existing translations had to be reviewed – and to all intents and pur-poses that amounted to re-translating all of them – editors’ notes had tobe drafted, the bibliography researched, indexes drawn up, etc. By thebeginning of the 1980s, after some 15 years, none of the translations, onwhich much work had been done, had appeared in print. The endless pre-varication in the negotiations demotivated most of those concerned. ‘Whenwill Freud be translated in France?’ exclaimed Serge Moscovici (1981) inLe Monde newspaper in 1981. A decisive impetus had been given in 1967,with the publication of the Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse [The Languageof Psychoanalysis] by Laplanche and Pontalis (1967), both of them psycho-analysts who had initially trained in philosophy. The volume was the out-come of a university thesis that had taken them eight years to write, underthe leadership of D. Lagache; ever since, it has been an essential instrumentfor this kind of work. When the Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse appearedin print, the whole question of translating Freud’s complete works cameonce again to the fore.



Translations and revisions in everyday French

Unable to publish the results of their efforts in the Complete Works seriesthat was finding it difficult to get off the ground, Laplanche, Pontalis andthe members of the Bourguignon and Cotet group were authorized, by allthree publishing houses – Gallimard, Payot and the Presses Universitairesde France – to publish their translations and revisions. This meant thatthe following material could see the light of day: M�tapsychologie[Metapsychology] (1968), translated by Laplanche and Pontalis, La vie sexu-elle [Sexuality] (1969) and N�vrose, psychose et perversion [Neurosis, psychosisand perversion] (1973), all three published under the general editorship ofLaplanche. In 1974, there appeared the bilingual edition of L’homme auxrats [The ‘Rat Man’], by E. and P. Hawelka, while Pontalis founded a newseries, ‘Connaissance de l’Inconscient’ [‘Knowledge of the Unconscious’],published by Gallimard, which included the main items from Freud’s Corre-spondence. In the years that followed, other translations and revisions filleda certain number of gaps. I am thinking here particularly of the two volumesR�sultats, id�es et probl�mes [Results, Ideas, Problems] published by thePresses Universitaires de France in 1984 and 1985, and the fresh translationsof Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933a[1932]) pub-lished by Gallimard in 1984, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality(1905d) (Gallimard, 1987) and Jokes and their relation to the unconscious(1905c) (Gallimard, 1988), to mention but a few. Personally speaking, I stillappreciate the way in which the translators of that period managed toremain faithful to Freud’s original texts while adopting a style of writingthat is close to everyday French – those translations enable me to dreamand to associate freely. Finally, in the mid-1980s, the three French publish-ing houses came to an agreement, and it was decided that the publication ofFreud’s Complete Works would be undertaken by the Presses Universitairesde France. The editorial board had still to be decided upon. Given that itwas impossible to find in France the equivalent of a James Strachey whohad performed the amazing feat of single-handedly translating the StandardEdition, a staff of translators was set up under the general leadership ofA. Bourguignon and P. Cotet and the scientific editorship of J. Laplanche.

THIRD PERIOD: THE OEUVRES COMPLETES DE FREUD.PSYCHANALYSE – OCF.P [THE COMPLETE WORKS OF

FREUD. PSYCHOANALYSIS] (1988–2008)

Fourteen volumes out of the anticipated twenty have so farbeen published

In 1988, the first volume of Freud’s complete psychoanalytic works inFrench (Oeuvres Compl�tes de Freud. Psychanalyse – OCF.P) was published:this was Volume XIII, containing Freud’s papers on metapsychology andother writings. So far, fourteen volumes out of the planned 20 have appearedin print; these volumes have not been published in chronological order butin a somewhat disorganized manner. French-speaking readers will still have

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to wait before an overall chronological view of Freud’s theory becomesavailable to them – until the final volumes are published, along with a bibli-ography and indexes. Freud’s neurological papers will be issued separately,but no date for their publication has as yet been fixed.

Scientific exactness

The first volume was welcomed with some relief, since it meant that a highlyprecise French translation of Freud’s psychoanalytic writings was – at last –available. Following the model of the Standard Edition, the introduction toeach paper carries the publication dates of the main German editions as wellas those of the English and French translations. An Editor’s Note precedesthe main body of the text, the layout of which is such that the page numbersof the Gesammelte Werke edition can be found in the margins. That said,the accepted chronology of several of Freud’s writings has been changed:instead of being classified according to the date of publication, as is theusual practice in the international community, the criterion adopted is thedate of their actual writing (insofar as this is known), a modification thatcannot but create confusion. For example, the translation of the ‘Wolf Man’paper (Freud, 1918b[1914]) is dated ‘1914’ and appears in Volume XIII,whereas one would have expected it to be dated 1918 and published in Vol-ume XV.

The start of a lengthy controversy

Although people were justifiably delighted when the first volume of theOCF.P appeared in print, many found themselves more and more discon-certed as they read through the text. With the aim of following Freud’s ori-ginal text as closely as possible, the translators felt it necessary to invent acertain number of neologisms and make use of a style of writing thatsounded quite unfamiliar, one that evoked no affective response in French.A fierce controversy sprang up in several psychoanalytic journals and in thepress. As the literary critic John E. Jackson wrote in the Journal de Gen�ve(Jackson, 1988, 21 May, p. 2):

Freud re-translated – what a catastrophe! I invite the translators to remember thatthe language spoken by the readers to whom they are addressing themselves isFrench, that that language has its own rules and above all means of expressionwhich ought not to be exactly modelled on those of the German language on thepretext, as false as it is ridiculous, of remaining faithful to the original.

The Revue FranÅaise de Psychanalyse began a column entitled ‘Chroniclesof the Oeuvres Compl�tes translation’ in which many psychoanalystsexpressed their disagreement with the editorial policy of the OCF.P.

The French language manhandled

Let me begin this section by apologizing to those readers who may not befamiliar with the French language: I am now about to discuss issues thatare difficult to communicate from one language to another, issues that haveto do with certain specific aspects of the French language. For those who do



not speak French, I shall, to the best of my ability, try to make these com-ments comprehensible.

Most commentators acknowledged the conscientiousness of the OCF.Ptranslators in dealing with the enormous task they had set themselves; theircriticisms were for the most part levelled at the fact that the languageemployed makes Freud’s writings difficult to understand, not only for awider readership but also, in some cases, for psychoanalysts themselves. Col-ette Chiland (1988), for example, acknowledged that the OCF.P, as a criticaledition, is an ‘exemplary’ instrument and reference document. She wasnonetheless saddened by the fact that many passages were incomprehensible:‘‘[ ... ] Some passages are not written in French: they are said to be in‘Freudian French’, but they are in fact written in ‘Laplanchian’’’ (p. 997).I. Barande (1988, p. 972) described the translation as ‘‘uncosmetic surgery’’,saying that it amounted to an attack on Freud’s style of writing in German,the letter of which has become unrecognizable and the spirit of which haslost all vitality. M. Pollak-Cornillot deplored several choices which only dis-concerted French-speaking readers, for example ‘fantaisie’ [fancy] in the sin-gular as a substitute for ‘imagination’ [Phantasie], and ‘fantaisies’ [fantasies]in the plural as a substitute for ‘fantasmes’ [Phantasien]. She argued that bysubstituting ‘fantaisie’ for ‘imagination’, the latter word, which is highlyevocative, would no longer play the essential role that it had fulfilled untilthen whenever Freud’s writings were read: ‘‘Fantaisie will never have, in themind of French readers, the same impact, the same evocative power’’(Pollak-Cornillot, 1994, p. 247).

Excessive use of ‘terminological words’

H.-M. Gauger, an expert in Romance languages, gave a well-balancedaccount of the characteristic features of the first volumes of the OCF.P. Thetranslations were done in a very conscientious manner and are the fruit of avast amount of work and devotion to the task. His basic criticism has to dowith the fact that the text of the French translation is too far removed fromthe language employed by Freud, which was essentially that of the classiceveryday German of a well-educated person: ‘‘[The translation] undoubtedlykeeps to the text; the problem is that it keeps too closely to the text, so thatit does not keep closely enough to the target language, to the linguisticawareness of the French-speaking reader’’ (Gauger, 1994, p. 553).

The OCF.P translations, unlike those of the first period, deserve credit fordealing seriously with Freud’s terminology; however, all through the text,they do tend to make too much use of ‘terminological words’ which in factdo not exist in Freud’s use of German: ‘‘In that sense, Freud is a bit likeKafka: a discourse that is linguistically entirely normal, with its kind of old-fashioned academic charm and quite extraordinary content’’ (Gauger, op.cit., p. 552). Gauger remarked on the syntactic and lexical ponderousnessbrought about by the introduction of so many neologisms such as ‘passag�-ret�’ [temporariness] for the previous ‘�ph�m�re’ [ephemeral, short-lived] –Verg�nglichkeit [transience] in German – or ‘refusement’ [refusing] for ‘d�fail-lance’ [failing, default] – Versagung [frustration]. Similarly, Gauger pointed

708 J.-M. Quinodoz


out some ‘excessive’ translations and misunderstandings: ‘‘D�saide [loss ofhelp] for ‘d�tresse’ [distress – the original translation of helplessness] is oneexample, because Hilflosigkeit and hilflos do not mean, curiously enough,that somebody is lacking in help; they mean that the person is unable tohelp him- or herself ’’ [op. cit., p. 555].

‘Ame’ [soul] for ‘psychisme’ [mind], ‘animique’ [animistic] for‘psychique’ [psychic, psychical]

Personally, I am disconcerted by the editorial policy of replacing ‘psychisme’[Seele ⁄ mind] and ‘psychique’ [seelig ⁄ psychical or mental] by ‘�me’ [soul]and ‘animique’ [animistic] throughout the OCF.P. By substituting for thenoun psychisme and the adjective psychique the words �me and animique, thetranslators have introduced a fundamental distortion into our understandingin French of Freud’s thinking. In the first place, the word �me in ordinaryFrench has an essentially spiritual connotation, and does not possess thedouble meaning of the German word Seele; in addition, the adjective animi-que evokes magic, primitive modes of thought and is in any case a neolo-gism. The English-speaking reader can imagine the effect produced if termswith spiritual and magical connotations were used throughout the StandardEdition to describe the mind and its functions. Criticisms on other pointscontinued to be voiced as subsequent volumes of the OCF.P appeared overthe years (Quinodoz, 1992), but had no effect on editorial policy; thetranslators have continued to work with the approach that they adoptedoriginally.

The OCF.P translators explain

In 1989, one year after the first volume appeared in print, the editorialboard of the OCF.P gave some detailed explanations of the options thatthey had chosen in Traduire Freud [Translating Freud], a book whichincludes a ‘glossary’ and a ‘structured terminology’ in which the authorsgive details of their principal terminological and conceptual choices(Bourguignon et al., 1989). The book testifies to the importance of the preli-minary work done within the group of translators with the aim of maintain-ing unity of style, terminology and comprehension. This is how theydescribe their project as compared to previous translations of Freud’swritings:

The present edition [ ... ] has as its aim a unitary version, as close as possible toFreud’s terminology and expression. In that, it is different from all previous andcontemporary translations into French, which, as a whole, constitute nothing but apatchwork in which each translator gave pre-eminence to his or her own style ratherthan to Freud’s.

(Bourguignon et al., 1989, p. 69)

The work was carried out by several teams which brought together threesorts of essential skills: knowledge of German, of French literary and scien-tific language, and of Freud’s work. Some of those involved were practisingpsychoanalysts. In their foreword, the authors of Traduire Freud insist on



their total independence with respect to any ‘school’ or institution: ‘‘Thisproject is permanently and absolutely independent of any institutional con-trol, manifest or hidden. No society, no group of analysts has any rightwhatsoever to audit our work [ ... ]’’ (op. cit., p. 7). Among the variousoptions open to them, the translators adopted an approach that led them tofollow as closely as possible the wording of the original text so as to be ableto express as faithfully as possible its inflections and its stylistic, semanticand conceptual particularities. ‘‘That, in a nutshell, is the justification forthis project: to translate Freud by inventing, by shaping for him, not somekind of ‘Germanic’ French, but a ‘Freudian French’ that calls upon all theresources of the French language in the same way as Freud used those ofGerman’’ (op. cit., p. 14). In their desire to be as faithful as possible toFreud, the translators made a point of always treating as an imperative thefollowing guideline: ‘‘The text, the whole text, nothing but the text’’ (ibid.).It was an immense task, it must be said, and we should pay tribute to thededication that the translators showed in their attempt to make the OCF.Pthe work of reference that until then had been unavailable to French psycho-analysts.

Fears for the future of psychoanalysis

As early as 1988, some were expressing their concern over the long-termconsequences of the OCF.P translators’ decision to abandon everydayFrench: with these new translations, was the wider readership – and psycho-analysts in particular – about to lose contact with Freud’s thinking? Assoon as the first volume appeared, I. Barande voiced her concern: ‘‘For thereader, naive because not a polyglot, what will be the destiny of such a dis-torted message?’’ (1998, p. 972). Describing the translations as epitomizing a‘‘forcing of the French language’’, M. Pollak-Cornillot went on to expressher alarm:

Today, one feels somewhat uneasy at having to denounce so vigorously not onlymistakes in translation but also the very conception in which this translation isbeing carried out; but it has to be done, so that French readers will not once andfor all classify Freud as an obscure writer and attribute that obscurantism topsychoanalysis itself’

(Pollak-Cornillot, 1994, p. 20)

I have myself had a similar experience in a seminar in which the partici-pants had been reading Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud,1930a[1929]) in the new OCF.P translation. Puzzled by this version andunable to compare it with other French translations or with the originalGerman text, the seminar participants were surprised by the disconcertingstyle of the writing – which they attributed to Freud himself.

Twenty years have gone by since Colette Chiland, in an amusing pasticheof OCF.P terminology, wrote in 1988 of her fear that resorting to that writ-ten language might end up contaminating its oral counterpart. Nowadays,indeed, that form of language is evidenced in the way in which a certainnumber of French psychoanalysts express themselves orally, not only in theirwriting, without their realizing just how great a distance they are putting

710 J.-M. Quinodoz


between themselves and ordinary people. Some believe that the languageadopted in the OCF.P is part of the natural evolution of the French lan-guage; others argue that it is quite legitimate for French psychoanalysis toinvent its own vocabulary and style, just as any other scientific disciplinedoes. G-A. Goldschmidt has recently raised objections to that kind of argu-ment: ‘‘In France, and in particular in psychoanalytic circles, people seem towant to keep the language for themselves as a kind of initiatory rite on theway to true knowledge’’ (2007, p. 80).

In concluding this section, I would simply remind readers of what Freudhimself said about his choice of ordinary German words for das Ich anddas Es:

You will probably protest at our having chosen simple pronouns to describe ourtwo agencies or provinces instead of giving them orotund Greek names. In psycho-analysis, however, we like to keep in contact with the popular mode of thinking andprefer to make its concepts scientifically serviceable rather than to reject them.There is no merit in this; we are obliged to take this line; for our theories must beunderstood by our patients, who are often very intelligent, but not always learned.

(Freud, 1926e, p. 195)

Conclusion

The ideas that I have developed in this paper lead me to make two practicalsuggestions. The first of these is mainly intended for those who are oversee-ing the translations into French of Freud’s writings, while the other isaddressed to the international psychoanalytic community as a whole, forI would argue in favour of devoting more time to matters of translationin our discussions together.

A plea in favour of translations accessible to ordinary readers ofFrench

As regards translations of Freud’s writings, I think that it is essential forFrench publishers to continue to make available to ordinary readers transla-tions in everyday French such as those published by Gallimard under thegeneral editorship of J.-B. Pontalis, while the Presses Universitaires deFrance continue with their project and publish the remaining volumes in theOCF.P series.4 It would not, to my mind, be desirable were the OCF.Ptranslations simply to replace, as time goes by, the existing translations ineveryday French, as is already the case with the publication in the ‘Quadri-ge’ series of extracts from the OCF.P translations. If the OCF.P translationswere gradually to replace most of those that exist already in ‘naturalFrench’, the danger would undoubtedly be that the general public, under

4As of 1 January 2010, Freud’s writings will no longer be subject to copyright restrictions. J.-B. Pontalisinformed me that he intends to go on publishing new translations of Freud’s papers after that date(letter, 28 April 2008). In the same vein, M. Prigent, the head of the Presses Universitaires de France,replied to a similar question that I had asked of him: ‘‘We are at present envisaging various editorialhypotheses, without in any way jeopardizing the intellectual option of translating the Oeuvres Compl�tes’’(letter, 23 April 2008).



the impression that Freud himself wrote in erudite terms, would become lessand less interested in his work. To my mind, the general readership must begiven the opportunity of choosing between a translation where the emphasisis on scientific rigour and one in which the characteristic feature is ‘ordinarylanguage’. That kind of choice makes for complementarity, not competition,given that the two sets of translations target a different readership. I wouldadd that, in my opinion, it would be useful to continue publishing bilingualeditions, as Gallimard has done, so that the reader can refer also to the ori-ginal versions of the texts.

Devoting more space to translation issues in psychoanalysis

Faced with the increasing danger of a ‘Babelization’ of contemporarypsychoanalysis, there are calls for psychoanalysts to devote more time totranslation issues in our international discussions. In his comments on aclinical discussion between three psychoanalysts from different linguistic andcultural backgrounds, D. Scarfone asks what ingredients make for fruitfuldiscussion in our discipline. He argues that it is the ‘work of translation’that each protagonist carries out which makes for productive communica-tion between psychoanalysts. The term ‘work of translation’ is here used inits wider meaning, to include the psychoanalyst’s experience on several lev-els, and is not reducible simply to working with words. More precisely, theaim is to communicate an emotional potential at a deeper level togetherwith the meanings that it encompasses. When psychoanalytic communi-cation is successful, argues Scarfone, ‘‘it can transcend geographical, lin-guistic, cultural and theoretical barriers and concentrate on the majorissues in psychoanalytic work in the strict sense of the term’’ (Scarfone,2008, p. 259).

Psychoanalysts translating other psychoanalysts

The task of translating psychoanalytic texts is an enormous one and theproblems it poses are highly complex. Although the work is already underway, a great deal remains to be done. In the space of one short paper, it isimpossible to mention all those who are working towards that end. I wouldall the same like to say a word about the impressive work at present beingdone by several groups of psychoanalysts who translate on a regular basisarticles that have appeared in English in the International Journal of Psycho-analysis. The selected articles are translated into several languages; for morethan 20 years now, they have been published in Portuguese and in Spanishin Latin America, and more recently, in Europe, in French, Italian, Germanand Russian.5 Carried out with the aim of producing accurate translations

5The titles of these annual volumes are as follows: Livro Anual de Psican�lise and Libro Anual dePsicoan�lisis, in Portuguese and Spanish respectively, published in Sao Paulo since 1985; L’Ann�ePsychanalytique Internationale (2003–2006, Geneva: Editions M�decine et Hygi�ne; since 2007 Paris:InPress); L’Annata Psicoanalitica Internazionale (since 2004, Rome: Edizione Borla); Verkehrte Liebe andSchweigen (2006 and 2007, T�bingen: Edition diskord). The Russian edition is due to appear for the firsttime in 2008 (Moscow: New Literary Observer Publishing House). [See www.annualsofpsychoanalysis.com]

712 J.-M. Quinodoz


that are not ‘‘word by word’’ but ‘‘from world to world’’ as Umberto Eco(2003) very appositely put it, it is hoped that these translations will be help-ful for the many readers whose knowledge of English is not adequateenough to enable them to take full advantage of psychoanalytic papers thathave been published in an international review that remains the reference inits field. It should also be pointed out that these various publications are ofinterest to other psychoanalysts who, although familiar with several lan-guages, are glad to be able to read articles in their mother tongue and to getin touch with feelings, impressions and images that go beyond the wordsemployed.

With the passing of time, the translators of these annual publications – allof them psychoanalysts – have acquired considerable experience in this field.They have as a result been able to raise fundamental questions aboutpsychoanalysis that go beyond strictly terminological and technical issues,questions indeed that would be well worth discussing in greater depth. Oneexample would be the internal debate that took place last year in a group ofGerman-speaking psychoanalysts about an article on the idea of apr�s-coup[deferred action ⁄ afterwardsness] published in English (Faimberg, 2005a, b;Sodr�, 2005); they were working on translating it into German. Even thoughthe words Nachtr�glich and Nachtr�glichkeit, originally from German, aretranslated into French as ‘apr�s-coup’, the translators realized that it was nolonger possible simply to back-translate apr�s-coup as Nachtr�glich or Nac-htr�glichkeit. ‘Apr�s-coup’ had become a psychoanalytic concept in its ownright and, to avoid any confusion between a word in everyday language anda psychoanalytic concept that we owe specifically to French psychoanalysis,our German colleagues decided to keep the term apr�s-coup (in French) intheir German translation. That is an example of the paradoxical destiny ofa term that has no reversibility from one language to another (Mark Fell-man, personal communication). The example clearly illustrates the impor-tance of the issues involved in translation in the wider sense of the term; itwould no doubt be beneficial if the international psychoanalytic communitycould listen more attentively to the experience of psychoanalysts who trans-late other psychoanalysts.

Translations of summary

Wie Ubersetzungen von Freuds Schriften das franzosische psychoanalytische Denken beein-flusst haben. �bersetzungen der Freudschen Schriften haben das psychoanalytische Denken in Frank-reich nachhaltig beeinflusst. Sie haben gleichzeitig, was das Ich und das Es, das Ideal-Ich und dasIch-Ideal und die Spaltung anlangt, zu Begriffsverzerrungen gef�hrt. Lacans ,,R�ckkehr zu Freud’’ hatdas Interesse an Freuds Schriften zweifellos wiederbelebt; durch die vorrangige Konzentration auf Freudsfr�hes Werk aber hat Lacans persçnliche Lesart die Bedeutung der Texte, die Freud nach seinen metapsy-chologischen Beitr�gen des Jahres 1915 verfasste, heruntergespielt. Dass es keine franzçsische Editions�mtlicher Schriften Freuds gibt, macht es f�r franzçsische Psychoanalytiker schwierig, die verf�gbarenWerke in den entsprechenden Gesamtkontext seiner Entwicklungen einzuordnen. Gut mçglich, dass sichdie Oeuvres Compl�tes als �quivalent der Standard Edition erweisen werden, doch bislang sind sie allesandere als vollst�ndig – und weil das verwendete Vokabular mit der Alltagssprache wenig zu tun hat,sind die bereits gedruckt vorliegenden B�nde kaum dazu angetan, die allgemeine �ffentlichkeit zurFreud-Lekt�re zu veranlassen. In diesem Beitrag stellt der Verfasser bestimmte Fragen, die �ber das fran-zçsische Beispiel hinausgehen und zum Beispiel den Einfluss betreffen, den �bersetzungen in anderenpsychoanalytischen Kontexten aus�ben. Nachdem im Grunde das Englische zur Lingua franca der Kom-munikation zwischen Psychoanalytikern geworden ist, stehen wir vor neuen Herausforderungen, wenn



wir ein doppeltes Risiko vermeiden wollen: die Gefahr einer bloßen Standardisierung sowie die einer,,Babylonisierung’’ der Psychoanalyse.

Como las traducciones de los escritos de Freud han influido en el pensamiento psicoanalıticofrances. Las traducciones de los escritos de Freud han tenido una influencia duradera en el pensamientopsicoanaltico en Francia. Sin embargo han originado algunas distorsiones conceptuales en lo que serefiere al yo y al ello, al yo ideal y al ideal del yo, y a la escisin. El ‘‘retorno a Freud’’ de Lacan cierta-mente volvi a despertar inter�s en los escritos de Freud; pero al estar centrado sobre todo en sus pri-meros trabajos, la lectura personal de Lacan minimiz la importancia de los textos que Freud escribiluego de sus trabajos metapsicolgicos de 1915. La ausencia de una edicin francesa de las obras com-pletas de Freud hace difcil que los psicoanalistas franceses las ubiquen en el contexto apropiado conrespecto a sus desarrollos como un todo. La edicin de las Oeuvres compl�tes [Obras completas] bienpuede convertirse en el equivalente de la Standard Edition, pero affln est� lejos de ser completa, y alemplear un vocabulario bastante lejano del lenguaje cotidiano, aquellos volfflmenes en circulacin tiendena hacer menos probable que el pfflblico general lea a Freud. En este artculo el autor suscita ciertas preg-untas que van m�s all� del ejemplo franc�s, tal como el impacto que tiene la traduccin dentro de otroscontextos psicoanalticos. Hoy que el ingl�s se ha vuelto m�s o menos la lingua franca para la comunica-cin entre psicoanalistas, tenemos que enfrentar nuevos desafos si queremos evitar un doble riesgo: tantola mera estandarizacin, como la ‘‘babelizacin’’ del psicoan�lisis.

L’influence des traductions de Freud sure la pensee psychanalytique francaise. Les traductionsde Freud ont exerc� une influence durable sur le courant psychanalytique franÅais. En particulier ellesont introduit certaines distorsions conceptuelles dans les notions de moi et de Åa, de moi id�al et d’id�aldu moi, ainsi que de clivage. Par ailleurs, le « retour Freud » de J. Lacan a revivifi� l’int�rÞt pour lestextes freudiens. Mais, en privil�giant la premi�re p�riode de Freud, la lecture personnelle de Lacan aminimis� les travaux freudiens post�rieurs la M�tapsychologie (1915). L’absence d’une �dition franÅaisedes œuvres compl�tes de Freud rend difficile pour les psychanalystes franÅais de situer les textes freudienspar rapport l’ensemble de son �volution. Encore inachev�es, les Œuvres Compl�tes pourraient devenirl’�quivalent de la Standard Edition, mais en utilisant un franÅais tr�s diff�rent de la langue quotidienneelles �loignent Freud du grand public. Au-del de l’exemple franÅais, cet article peut susciter des interro-gations sur l’influence des traductions dans diff�rentes langues au sein d’autres courants psychanaly-tiques. A l’heure o� l’anglais devient une langue de communication courante entre psychanalystes, denouveaux d�fis se pr�sentent nous si nous voulons �viter un double danger : aussi bien le risque d’uneuniformisation, que le risque d’une « bab�lisation » de la psychanalyse.

L’influenza delle traduzioni di Freud sul pensiero psicoanalitico francese. Le traduzioni di Freudhanno esercitato una continua influenza sull’attuale psicoanalisi francese. In particolare, hanno dato ori-gine ad alcune distorsioni concettuali nelle nozioni di Io, Id, di Io Ideale e Ideale dell’Io e nel concettodi scissione. D’altra parte, il ‘ritorno a Freud’ di J. Lacan ha sicuramente riacceso l’interesse per i testifreudiani. Tuttavia, la lettura personale di Lacan, privilegiando i primi lavori di Freud, ha minimizzatol’importanza dell’opera freudiana successiva alla pubblicazione della Metapsicologia (1915). Il fatto poiche manchi un’edizione francese dell’opera completa di Freud rende difficile per gli psicoanalisti francesicontestualizzare i testi freudiani in modo appropriato e metterli in rapporto all’evoluzione dell’opera nelsuo insieme. Ancora incompiuta, l’ edizione francese potrebbe divenire l’equivalente della Standard Edi-tion. Tuttavia, poich� � stata resa in un francese molto diverso dalla lingua quotidiana, potrebbe ancheallontanare Freud da un pubblico piffl ampio. Questo articolo propone potenziali interrogativi che vannooltre l’esempio del francese, come quello dell’influenza che le varie traduzioni esercitano all’interno dialtri contesti psicoanalitici. All’epoca in cui l’inglese costituisce la lingua franca degli psicoanalisti, ci tro-viamo di fronte a nuove sfide se vogliamo evitare un duplice rischio: da una parte quello di una merastandardizzazione della psicoanalisi e dall’altra quello di una ‘babelizzazione’ della psicoanalisi.

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