Misleading Translation of Freud's Work as Presented in Bettelheim's Book, Freud and Man’s Soul

“Freud and Man’s Soul”, by Bruno Bettelheim, is the authors attempt to clear up inadequacies and errors of Freud’s research and writings after being translated to English. Bettelheim, with much of the same childhood background as Freud, studied Freud’s work at the University of Vienna. He later moved to the United States and became the director of the University of Chicago’s Orthogenic School. After reading Freud’s work in English he found the translation to be misleading. “…I discovered that reading Freud in English translations leads to quite different impressions from those I had formed when I had read them in German” (Weeks 3). He clears up some of these misunderstandings in his book. He argues that translations of Freud’s work have failed to capture Freud’s emotional intensity; even though Freud and his daughter Anna oversaw much of the translation.

“Deprived of the right word or the appropriate phrasing, Freud’s thoughts become not merely coarse or oversimplified but seriously distorted” (9). The English translations fail to capture Freud’s true meaning of his writings. F...