Sigmund Freud, Translator of The Enfranchisement of Women By J.S. Mill

Abstract

After the death of Mill's official translator, Freud (then a brilliant and impoverished student) was offered by Gomperz, thanks to the recommendation of his philosophy teacher von Brentano, the translation of the last volume of John Stuart Mill's works. This included the revolutionary essay of 1851 (by Mill and/or by his partner Mrs Harriet Taylor) on the enfranchisement of women. My hypothesis is that, far from leaving Freud unscathed, this commissioned work had affected some of his negative views about women, which were anyway common in the culture of his times. J.S. Mill (1806–1873), the utopian philosopher whose influence on his theories Freud never acknowledged, might have had an effect, without him becoming aware of it, on his way of listening to the complaints and demands of his female patients, who had cooperated with him in the creation of his technique. The activity of translating (which, according to Valery Larbaud, has ‘something sexual about it’) was able later to play a part in giving birth to Freud's theories on the issue of ‘femininity’, in relation to both women and men. Apres la mort du traducteur officiel, Freud, etudiant brillant et necessiteux, se voit confer par Gomperz et sur la recommandation du philosophe von Brentano dont it est l'etudiant, la traduction du dernier volume des oeuvres de John Stuart Mill, dans lequel se trouve l'essai revolutionnaire (de Mill et/ou sa compagne Mrs Harriet Taylor) de 1851 sur l'affranchissement des femmes. Loin de laisser Freud indemne, ce travail de commande va - c'est mon hypothese - entamer quelques uns de ses prejuges negatifs a l'encontre des femmes (qui flottaient d'ailleurs dans fair du temps). Ce philosophe utopiste, J. S. Mill (1806–1873) - dont Freud ne mentionne pourtant jamais l'influence sur sa propre theorie - pourrait avoir, a son insu et pour une large part, modifie son ecoute des plaintes et revendications de ses patientes, devenues co-creatrices de sa technique. L'acte de traduction (qui a selon Valery Larbaud ‘quelque chose de sexuel’), a pu produire plus tard chez Freud un enfant theorique, en particulier autour du ‘feminin’, questionnee chez la femme et chez F homme.