Abstract

CECCARELLI, Paulo Roberto. Freud has been betrayed. Reverso [online]. 2007, vol.29, n.54, pp. 43-53. ISSN 0102-7395.

This paper stimulates a discussion on an increasingly frequent form of betrayal, which consists of attributing to Freud a number of concepts and theoretical positions, which are not present in his work. The author denounces these distortions of Freud’s thought, which began with the translation of his work, and continues when one says, for example, "the subject in Freud", "the concept of phallus in Freud", "the structure of narcissism" and so forth. Although it is admissible to read Freud using the new lens brought by Lacan’s contributions that have arisen from other schools of thinking, we are not authorized to attribute to Freud things that he never said. The author also maintains that we cannot talk about structuralism in Freudian theory for, at least, two reasons. First, such Freud’s thought can only be fully appraised from the "Evolution Theory" viewpoint, from which Freud derived his main theoretical standpoints. Finally, the author discusses the consequences of such betrayal in clinical work, in the understanding of psychic suffering and in the definition of normality.

Keywords : Translation; Subject; Structure; Clinical work.

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