ABSTRACT
From the beginning of psychoanalysis, a relationship with politics can already be observed in the person of the young Freud. He thought of going into a political career. He might even have done so, had the period of liberalism in the Austrian Empire lasted longer than the few years that history allowed it. What remained of Freud’s youthful interest in politics were the numerous political and military metaphors he employed in his writings and which later made life so difficult for the translators. Words like Zensur [censorship], Besetzung [cathexis], Instanz [instance] lose their German meaning in the English translation. His purpose of using these words as metaphors to make his ideas more real was often turned into the opposite.
