INDEX
Background
Angst as a physical (body) tension, which cannot enter the psychic field : Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud on difference between ‘ängstlich’ & ‘nervös‘ / James Strachey & Julia Evans on translating them
‘I will only say that I think ‘Angst’ relates to the state and disregards the object’ : Sigmund Freud
‘Angst’ as ‘Fear’ and ‘heightened tenderness for the mother’
Background
-Sigmund Freud uses the term ‘angst’.
Translations of Angst from the internet:
Angst: anxiety; fear; fright; panic; terror; stuffiness; oppression; heaviness; sinking feeling
Angst → anxiety, fear, fright, dread
Angst → fear of failure, anxiety, anguish, dread, apprehension, fear, fright, trepidation, alarm
-Jacques Lacan, who read Sigmund Freud in the German original, translates from German into French as ‘l’angoisse’.
From 1909 when A. A. Brill translated ‘Ûber die Berechtigung, von der Neurasthenie einen Bestimmten Symptomenkomplex als ‘Angstneurose’ Abzutrennen (1894)’ as ‘The Justification for detaching from Neurasthenia a Particular Syndrome: the Anxiety-Neurosis’*, then Anxiety has been accepted by his other translators, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, W. J. Sprott and James Strachey as the standard translation for Angst. Wherever possible this mistranslation of Anxiety, has been corrected to Angst, though ‘Dread’ (think Kierkegaard) might be an alternative.
*See Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description “Angst (Anxiety) Neurosis” : June 1894 [1895b] : Sigmund Freud on this site /3 Sigmund Freud (18940601)
Cormac Gallagher & Adrian Price both translate ‘l’angoisse’ as ‘Anxiety’ in Jacques Lacan’s texts. This is a mistake. Seminar X should be called, From the Anguish (de l’angoisse) & most of the references to ‘anxiety’ should be changed to ‘anguish’ throughout.
Jacques Lacan on 6th February 1957 Seminar IV examines in detail how Sigmund Freud has been mistranslated into French. It is intended to publish this in March 2025. In the meantime, notes & information on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19570206 or 19561121)
Julia Evans – July 2022, Revised and republished February 2025
Angst as a physical (body) tension, which cannot enter the psychic field : Sigmund Freud
-Draft E How Anguish [Angst] Originates : 6th June 1894? : Sigmund Freud See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (June 1894)
P81 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation (Note the German has not been checked but assumed) :
If one accepts the theory so far, one has to insist that in angst [anxiety] neurosis there must be a deficit to be noted in sexual affect, in psychic libido, And this is confirmed by observation. If this connection is put before women patients, they are always indignant and declare that on the contrary they now have no desire whatever, and similar statements. Men often confirm the observation that since suffering from angst anxiety they have felt no sexual desire.
… An alienation is artificially brought about between the physicosexual act and its psychic working over. If the endogenous tension then increases further on its own account, it cannot be worked over and generates angst anxiety. Here libido can be present, but not at the same time as angst anxiety. Thus here psychic refusal is followed by psychic alienation; tension of endogenous origin is followed by induced tension.
P82 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation :
On the whole the agreement is not so bad. Where there is an abundant development of physical sexual tension, but this cannot be turned into affect by psychic working over – because of insufficient development of psychic sexuality or because of the attempted suppression of the latter (defence), or of its falling into decay, or because of habitual alienation between physical and psychic sexuality – the sexual tension is transformed into angst anxiety. Thus a part is played in this by the accumulation of physical tension and the prevention of discharge in the psychic direction.
But why does the transformation take place specifically into angst anxiety? Angst Anxiety is the sensation of the accumulation of another endogenous stimulus, the stimulus to breathing, a stimulus incapable of being worked over psychically apart from this; angst anxiety might therefore be employed for accumulated physical tension in general. Furthermore, if the symptoms of angst anxiety neurosis are examined more closely, one finds in the neurosis disjointed pieces of a major angst [anxiety] attack: namely, mere dyspnea, mere palpitations, mere feeling of angst [anxiety], and a combination of these. Looked at more precisely, these are the paths of innervation that the physical sexual tension, ordinarily traverses even when it is about to be worked over psychically. [The dyspnea and palpitations belong to coitus; and while ordinarily they are employed only as subsidiary paths of discharge here they serve, so to speak, as the only outlets for the excitation.] This is once again a kind of conversion in angst anxiety neurosis, just as occurs in hysteria (another instance of their similarity); but in hysteria it is psychic excitation that takes a wrong path exclusively into the somatic field, whereas here it is a physical tension, which cannot enter the psychic field and therefore remains on the physical path. The two are very often combined.
That is as far as I have got today. The gaps badly need filling. I think it is incomplete, I lack something; but I believe the foundation is right .
***
Sigmund Freud on difference between ‘ängstlich’ & ‘nervös‘ / James Strachey & Julia Evans on translating them
– LECTURE XXV The Angst [Die Angst] (Lecture 25 (Anxiety)) : 1917 : in Part III – General Theory of the Neuroses of Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis: 1915-1917 (Published 1916-1917) : Sigmund Freud :
This is now available from Lecture XXV The Angst [Die Angst] : 1917 : Sigmund on this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19170101)
Download translated by James Strachey and with notes, PFL, at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net/Freud (1917). Notes at this site /4 Sigmund Freud (19170101)
P440 PFL, Footnote 2, James Strachey
P440, I know that is true, and nothing will have surprised you more, I expect, than that there was nothing in it about anxiety [angst],[2] of which most neurotics complain, which they themselves describe as their worst suffering and which does in fact attain enormous intensity in them and may result in their adopting the craziest measures.
Footnote [2], James Strachey, [‘Angst.’ Though ‘anxiety’, in a sense quite different from the colloquial one, is the technical translation, we often find it necessary to render it by such words as ‘fear’, being ‘frightened’ or ‘afraid’, and so on.]
p440-441 PFL, Footnote 3, James Strachey
p440-441, Perhaps it has been regarded as something self-evident : the word ‘nervös‘ and ‘ängstlich’[3] are commonly used interchangeably, as though they meant the same thing. But we have no right to do so: there are ‘ängstlich‘ people who are otherwise not at all ‘nervös‘, and, moreover, ‘nervös‘ people who suffer from many symptoms, among which is a tendency to Angst, is not included.
Footnote [3] James Strachey, 3. [These words are by no means equivalent to the colloquial English ‘nervous’ and ‘anxious’. ‘Nervös‘, might be rendered by ‘nervy, or ‘jumpy’ and ‘ängstlich‘ by ‘nervous’, in its colloquial sense. ‘Anxious’ in its ordinary usage is more like the German ‘bekümmert’ or ‘besorgt’.]
Julia Evans notes, Angsty seems to be the best translation of ängstlich. Here is an internet definition: Angsty/ adjective / often worried or unhappy, especially about personal problems
The following are other internet definitions –
Angstlich = Afraid, adjective. afraid [adjective] feeling fear or being frightened (of a person, thing etc)
Nervös /adjective/ i. nervous which in German is also nervös, aufgeregt, nervös bedingt, zimperlich, Nerventense, angespannt, gespannt, verkrampft, nervös, spannungsgeladen ii. edgy which is also in German, nervös, kantig, gereizt, eckig, kribbelig, bissig
‘I will only say that I think ‘Angst’ relates to the state and disregards the object’ : Sigmund Freud
P443 PFL, Lecture XXV 1917, ‘I will only say that I think ‘Angst’ relates to the state and disregards the object’ … ‘A certain ambiguity and indefiniteness in the use of the word ‘Angst’ will not have escaped you. By ‘angst anxiety’ we usually understand the subjective state into which we are put by perceiving the ‘generation of angst anxiety’ and we call this an affect. … But I do not think that with this enumeration we have arrived at the essence of an affect. We seem to see deeper in the case of some affects and to recognise that the core which holds the combination we have described together is the repetition of some particular significant experience.’
P446 PFL ‘If we now pass over to consider neurotic angst anxiety, what fresh forms and situations are manifested by angst anxiety in neurotics?’
‘Angst’ as ‘Fear’ and heightened tenderness for the mother
On 20th March 1957, Jacques Lacan quotes from Little Hans case study and James Strachey uses ‘fear’ and ‘heightened tenderness for the mother’, not anxiety, to translate ‘Angst’.
20th March 1957 Seminar IV, p18, From the moment where he [il] also exists as real, he has not much choice: obviously he is sure that he can imagine himself as fundamentally other and rejected. Other from what is desired, and as such outside of the imaginary field where it [elle probably refers back to middle voice [la voix moyenne]] was able to find, up to now [jusque là], to satisfy itself, through [par] the place which he was occupying there [y]. Freud underlines this[45]: this [ce] from which he [il – Hans] himself acts [il s’agit], it is from something that [qui] at first, happens [as] an anguish [une angoisse], but anguish [angoisse] of what?
Translated by the EC Collective : Alma Buholzer, Ganesh Anantharaman (from August 2021), Greg Hynds, Jesse Cohn, Julia Evans, Simon Fisher (from April 2023), see Seminar IV The Relation from Object (La relation d’objet) & Freudian Structures (1956-1957) : from 21st November 1956 : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19570320 or 19561121)
[45] Below is given the probable passage on which Lacan is commenting.
GW 13. Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy (Little Hans)). | Translation by James Strachey, SE X p24-25. See www.Freud2Lacan.com. Angst has replaced Strachey’s translation. | An internet translation with Julia Evans’ help! |
Diese gesteigerte Zartlichkeit filr die Mutter ist es, die in Angst umschlagt, die, wie wir sagen, der Verdrangung unterliegt. Wir wissen noch nicht, woher der AnstoB zur Verdrangung stammt;- vielleicht erfolgt sie bloB aus der filr das Kind nicht zu bewaltigenden Intensitat der Regung, vielleicht wirken andere Miichte, die wir noch nicht erkennen, dabei mit. Wir werden es weiterhin erfahren. Diese, verdrangter erotischer Sehnsucht entsprechende, Angst ist zunachst wie jede Kinderangst objektlos, noch Angst und nicht Furcht. Das Kind kann nicht [anfanglich] wissen, wovor es sich fiirchtet, und wenn Hans auf dem .ersten Spaziergange mit dem Madchen nicht sagen will, wovor er sich filrchtet, so weiB er es eben noch nicht. | It is this heightened tenderness for the mother that turns into angst [ | It is this heightened tenderness for the mother that turns into angst, which, as we say, is subject to repression. We do not yet know where the impulse to repression comes from; perhaps it is merely the result of an intensity of emotion that the child cannot cope with, or perhaps other forces that we do not yet recognise are involved. We will continue to find out. This angst, which corresponds to repressed erotic longing, is at first, like every child's angst, objectless, still angst and not fear. The child cannot [initially] know what s/he is afraid of, and if Hans does not want to say what he is afraid of on the first walk with the girl, then he does not yet know. |
Further information: Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy – ‘Little Hans’ : 1909 : Sigmund Freud at this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19090101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts. Also available from this site / d) Little Hans (1 A Lacanian Clinic/A Case Studies /ii) From Freud & Lacan).
Comment
So the Angst “corresponds”, in this passage, to a concentrated, erotic, Sehnsucht**.
Sigmund Freud, of course, uses everyday language for his own purposes. However, by the end of the nineteenth century Sehnsucht had become a word to be found in Romantic Literature from the late eighteenth century onwards, as well as amongst philosophers writing in German. Angst, here, is definitely qualified by “a yearning”
**Wikipedia notes:
Sehnsucht is a German noun translated as “longing”, “desire”, “yearning”, or “craving”. Some psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences