James Strachey

James Beaumont Strachey (/ˈstreɪtʃi/; 26 September 1887, London – 25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English.

He is perhaps best known as the general editor of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, "the international authority".

At Cambridge, Strachey fell deeply in love with the poet Rupert Brooke, who answered his correspondence but did not return his affections.

He was himself pursued by mountaineer George Mallory, by Harry Norton and by economist John Maynard Keynes, with whom he also had an affair.

Strachey was assistant editor of The Spectator, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group or "Bloomsberries" when he became familiar with Alix Sargant Florence, though they first met in 1910.

[3] Looking back forty years later at this turning-point, Strachey commented in a "disarming passage" to his fellow analysts on his then qualifications as a psychoanalytic candidate, as compared to modern times: "A discreditable academic career with the barest of B.A.

"[4] He continued by saying that, having spent a couple of years in Vienna, “I got back to London in the summer of 1922, and in October, without any further ado, I was elected an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

James Strachey characterised the battle between the two women in his own wryly sensible way: "My own view is that Mrs K. has made some highly important contributions ... but that it’s absurd to make out (a) that they cover the whole subject or (b) that their validity is axiomatic.

Where necessary, it offers variorum texts; it wrestles with intractable material ... and it introduces each work, even the slightest paper, with indispensable bibliographical and historical information.

"[17] The most "obvious flaw in this translation was the substitution of esoteric neologisms for the plain German terms Freud preferred",[18] so that for example his I and his It become the 'Ego' and the 'Id'.

It was only later that I learnt he had overcome with extraordinary patience a series of eye operations that had threatened to put an end to his magnum opus".