Dear All
Very grateful thanks to those who have written so far in the hour or so since I posted this query. The score so far is: 9 to me (of whom 3 native speakers) and 4 to Nancy (ditto 3 native speakers). But I fear he may be right & I wrong because the ever-knowledgeable John Forrester has provided the context, see below.
So many thanks and do keep writing if you want to add more!
Best wishes
Naomi
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Dear Naomi,
Instantly recognizable, I'm glad to say!
It was published originally in 1938; it is the Standard Edition as 'Findings, Ideas, Problems'. In SE XXIII 299 Strachey gives as a note:
"[These short disconnected paragraphs were printed at the end of the volume of posthumous works published in 1941 (G.W., 17, 149-52) under the heading 'Ergebnisse, Ideen, Probleme: London, Juni 1938'. This heading is Freud's, except for the date of the year. These notes together with two others omitted by the German editors, occupy two sides of a single sheet of paper.]"
The note in question is translated by Strachey as follows:
"August 22.-Space may be the projection of the extension of the psychical apparatus. No other derivation is probable. Instead of Kant's a priori determinants of our psychical apparatus. Psyche is extended; knows nothing about it."
It is, in my view, extremely difficult to make out what Freud is getting at, whatever one's reading of the German syntax! The Kant reference is clarifying; but what was Freud doing thinking of Kant? One should always remember that Freud's concept of projection has these multiple determinants, with a conspicuous neo-Kantian element - it is at the root of why Freud thinks he is constructing a 'meta-psychology'. One reading of 'meta-' is that it is the equivalent, or related to, the Kantian concept of the 'transcendental'.
Does this help?
Best,
John
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