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DEAR SIR,
It was with great pleasure that I read Dr Ornston's paper: 'Strachey's influence: a preliminary report'. With one exception everything he says appears to me insightful and an aid in our understanding of what Freud wrote.
I do disagree, however, with his translation of 'ber Ich' as 'I above myself'. It is important not to fall into the same trap into which James Strachey fell, that is as Dr Ornston rightly points out, to permit our own philosophy to impose itself on the translation. Had Freud wanted to say 'I above myself', he would surely have written 'Ich über mich'. He chose to say 'ber Ich'. I think he made the choice for good reasons. 'I above myself' feels both too conscious and too personal to me. It is not just a conscious 'I' that is above, but an unconscious force, introjected in part from childish perceptions of the parent's prohibitions as well as passed through the ages of civilization. Freud's 'ber Ich' carries the feel both of that personal and partially collective unconscious; it carries the feel of a power within, over which we do not have total control. I am afraid that those feelings are lost when 'ber Ich' is translated with 'I above myself'.
Until something better comes along I will stick with my own (1975) translation of 'ber Ich' as 'Above I'.
Sincerely,