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The main aim of Bettelheim's latest book is to try and help us see the real Freud behind the mis-translations of the Standard Edition. He demonstrates most persuasively how the Stracheys have tried to impose a pseudo-scientific veneer over Freud's deliberately everyday choice of language. All of their mis-renderings tend in this same direction and many examples are given including some of those that have become most deeply embedded in the language of psycho-analysis. The most obvious are the terms “ego”, “id” and “superego” which in the original are “ich”, “es” and “überich”. These have, of course, their everyday English equivalents (“me” or “I”, “it”, “above — I”) and there are no grounds for supposing that there is any reason to translate them otherwise (the French, for example, use “moi”, “ca” and “surmoi” as direct equivalents). Other examples include “cathexis”, and “parapraxis”, even “free association”. But I shall not repeat here all of Bettelheim's cogent instances.
The essence of the distortion is represented in the title of Bettelheim's book: Freud was profoundly concerned with the study of man's soul and the instrument he used, primarily, was his self-analysis. It is self-knowledge that