Translating Trieb in the First Edition of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: Problems and Perspective

When discussing Strachey's translation of Freud (Freud, 1905/1953) the first problem that pops up is almost inevitably his translation of the German Trieb by “instinct.” Instincts, as the standard objection goes, have a predetermined object that is given to them by nature to accomplish their biological function, whereas this wouldn't be the case with Triebe that don't have such a pre-given object. Since Freud fundamentally questions the idea of (human) sexuality as a biological function that aims at reproduction, Strachey should have translated Trieb in the contexts where it refers to sexuality, for example, as “drive” in order to clearly mark this difference. With regard to self-preservation, Instinkt would have been a possible translation. Indeed, there is or seems to be (things could indeed be much more complicated then we think) a much more intrinsic link between self-preservation and its object than between (human) sexuality and its object. Furthermore this would imply that Trieb/drive is typically human. Indeed, animal sexuality is in this line of thought quite often—rightly or wrongly—considered an exclusively reproductive function.

But are things really that simple? In the way I just formulated the problem, it has a very a “Lacanian” sound: Lacan stresses over and over again the nonbiological character of the drive (pulsion/dérive) and of desire that, in humans, would be an effect of language. Lacan—as well as Laplanche— stresses the passage in which Freud claims that the Trieb has no natural object (this passage is virtually the conclusion of Freud's analysis of homosexuality/inversion) and concludes from this that Trieb is not instinct (that does have a natural object) and hence should be translated differently: pulsion/dérive (Lacan, 1966, pp. 851-854). All of this implies that the decision not to translate Trieb as instinct is made on the basis of a specific reading of Freud's text and, as I will argue, of a problematic privileging of specific