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Den eben wo Begriffe fehlen
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
[Precisely where concepts fail you,
A timely word will come to mind.]
A new translation of Freud is a significant event because all translation is also an interpretation, a rewriting, and inevitably, a betrayal. Due to the inherently unsatisfactory nature of translation, when it matters, many of us control the English translations of Freud against the German original. Now we have a new resource to use and play against, an accessible and vernacular postmodern Freud, under the general editorship of Adam Phillips, who does not know German. Fifteen volumes are planned; twelve have already been published. Phillips rejects chronology for this series, proposing instead a thematic organization. Each volume has a different translator, thus sacrificing the internal consistency, excellent cross-referencing, and the more or less uniform lexical use of language and style of the Strachey edition. The introductory essays are all by nonpsychoanalysts—scholars of literature, the history of science, and philosophy. The issue of Freud's language is pivotal because his ideas have shaped our twenty-first-century perception of our world and of our humanity. His terms of reference are now colloquial in the media and in our daily speech. How Freud is translated determines how he is read and how his ideas are applied clinically and in the culture. A colleague who was active in founding a new psychoanalytic institute once argued: “Who needs to read Freud on technique? Physicists don't read Einstein. Read the new stuff!”