JANKÉLÉVITCH, SAMUEL (1869-1951)

Samuel Jankélévitch, a physician, was born in Odessa, Russia, on April 30, 1869, and died in Paris in 1951. He was one of the first French translators of the work of Sigmund Freud.

Affected by the discriminatory laws that affected Russian Jews in 1880, he traveled to France and studied medicine in Montpellier, then in Bordeaux. He married Anna Ryss. The couple had three children, one of whom, Vladimir, became a well-known philosopher. Jankélévitch practiced medicine in Bourges, then moved to Paris, where he remained until the Second World War. He published two books of his own: Nature et société (Nature and society; 1906) and Révolution et tradition (Revolution and tradition; 1947), together with a handful of articles in medical and applied psychology journals. His books reflect his interest in spiritualist philosophy rather than medicine. The remainder of his publishing activity consists of translations. These were numerous and eclectic: philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology, and psychoanalysis.

In the 1920s and 1930s he worked for Payot, translating not only the works of Sigmund Freud, but also those of Ernest Jones and Otto Rank. In spite of reservations concerning the difficulties for a nonanalyst in translating certain concepts or works (at the time there were no trained psychoanalysts in France), Freud allowed Payot to publish his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis in 1922, with Jankélévitch as translator.

In the preface of the book Jankélévitch states that he is less interested in championing the theories he is translating than in making them known to the French public to dispel common prejudices. There followed translations of The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life in 1922, and Totem and Taboo and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego in 1924. After 1927 he stopped translating Freud, and in any case ceased to be Freud's sole translator in France: Blanche Reverchon, Hélène Legros, Ignace Meyerson, and Marie Bonaparte were also working on Freud texts. With competition from Alcan and Gallimard, Payot also lost its publishing monopoly over Freud.

Ironically, Jankélévitch died in 1951 while preparing a work on Tolstoy and death.

Annick Ohayon

See also: France; Translation.

Bibliography

Jankélévitch, Samuel. (1906). Nature et société. Paris: Félix Alcan.

——. (1947). Révolution et tradition. Paris: J.-B. Janin.