You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
By Bruno Bettelheim. New York: Knopf, 1983, xii + 112 pp., $11.95.
Since coming to the United States from Vienna forty years ago, Bruno Bettelheim has done a series of books on psychoanalytic topics for the general reader. Last year he gathered some hitherto scattered criticisms of the Standard Edition and added some of his own, for an article in The New Yorker (1 March, 1982). This book is an extension of that article.
Bettelheim feels that because of his background and education he "is closely acquainted with the language as Freud himself used it" (p. viii). He sets two goals for himself: he intends "to correct the mistranslations of some of the most important psychoanalytic concepts; and to show how deeply humane a person Freud was ..." (p. xi). He argues that Freud grew away from natural science and should be classified as a "humanist" (pp. 37-49). He believes that Strachey obscured Freud's humanism by translating his vividly descriptive language into medical jargon. Although Bettelheim uses the euphemism "Freud's translators," he says that he means Strachey (p. 51).
Bettelheim's complaint is nowhere clearer than in his attempt to capture Freud's supple soul.