Translating Angst: Inhibitions and Symptoms in Anglo-American Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In this brief essay I tackle the thorny issue of the translation of Freud’s texts into English. Specifically, why is it that Freud’s Angst was translated as anxiety in English, instead of anguish or even angst itself, terms which actually exist in English? Or to ask a different question, what is the problem with anxiety as the English equivalent for Freud’s German Angst? I argue that these (mis)translations of Freud’s work, perhaps more obvious in English than in either French or Spanish, have generated real consequences for the actual practice of psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world, particularly the U.S.A., and moreover, have contributed to the cold reception that Lacan’s work has garnered in English-speaking psychoanalytic circles. The translation of Angst into anxiety is a sort of stripping or negating of certain aspects of Freud’s understanding of Angst, thereby making the remainder, understood in all its psychiatric glory, into an isolable problem worthy of being excised or medicated. This psychiatric resonance of the term anxiety has permeated Anglo-American psychoanalysis. Furthermore, Lacan’s take on angoisse provokes a real Freudian angst among Anglo-Americans; an apprehension and terror regarding an unknown danger that speaks an originary trauma that has been displaced into the future. An angst not easily dismissed and that is not in accord with the cultural and even geographical sensibilities of this place (the U.S.A) with a past masquerading as history. This is the kind of issue that must be dealt with if a Lacanian practice in English is to make any headway. It is not enough to translate Lacan into English. We must also make a cultural translation, and in doing so, address the problem of anxiety among Anglo-American psychoanalysts confronting the work of Lacan.

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