Freud intentionally used Das Ich to refer to both the "self" and an abstract metapsychological system. In English, the separation of the terms "self" and "ego" has led to major problems. The word self, taken in its everyday sense, is necessarily ubiquitous in psychoanalysis. But its reflexive nature makes it impossible to define except as a series of fantasies. Self has no other place as a theoretical word. What the analysand calls his self the analyst calls ego, which is definable, either in the sense of what can be known about the analysand's experience, or as a nonexperiential abstraction.
弗洛伊德有意用“Das Ich”来指代“自我”和一个抽象的心理玄学系统。在英语中，“自我”和“自我（ego）”这两个术语的区分引发了重大问题。“自我”这个词，就其日常意义而言，在精神分析中必然无处不在。但其反身性使得除了作为一系列幻想之外，它无法被定义。作为一个理论术语，“自我”没有其他立足之地。被分析者称为其“自我”的东西，分析师称之为“自我（ego）”，它是可以定义的，要么是从关于被分析者体验所能知晓的意义上来说，要么是作为一种非经验性的抽象概念。
