Psychoanalytic Review, 111(4), 385–412, 2024
© 2024 N.P.A.P. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2024.111.4.385
IN FOCUS: REVISIONING
CONVERSATION WITH MARK SOLMS
Mark Solms
With Fred Busch, Eran Rolnik, Otto Kernberg,
Susan Kassouf, Gary Ahlskog, Carl Jacobs,
Kerstin Pahl, and Aleksandra Wagner
Occasioned by the publication of The Revised Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, the text repre-
sents exchanges held in the summer of 2024 at the invitation
of The Psychoanalytic Review. It addresses the genesis and the his-
tory of the project, and its impact on psychoanalytic rethinking,
formation, and practice. While exploring the potential and the
limits of revisioning, it also raises questions about the nature
of transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge and about the
field’s relation to the state of its own standards in the age of
Anthropocene.
Keywords: revision, translation, drive, instinct, mourning,
narcissism, transference, psychoanalysis, neuroscience,
Anthropocene, Standard Edition, Revised Standard Edition,
Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Mark Solms
In the early spring of 2024, the psychoanalytic and other public
engaged with the legacy of Sigmund Freud received the message
that the much-awaited Revised Standard Edition of his complete psy-
chological works would be inaugurated soon. For those in New
York, the first encounter with the 24 volumes was made possible
by the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute on June 11.
It was at this event that The Psychoanalytic Review invited the Editor,
Professor Mark Solms, for a conversation about the project that
took more than three decades to complete.
The following transcript (edited for clarity) is the result of two
seminars closed to the public, held in August and September, a
record of exchange between psychoanalysts of different genera-
tions. The world map charted by their respective locations is far
from comprehensive, let alone complete. It nevertheless signals