Psychoanalyst as Editor: Neuropsychoanalytic and Lacanian Perspectives on the Revised Standard Edition

The long-awaited publication of the Revised Standard Edition (RSE) is a watershed, with commentaries, controversies, celebrations, and criticisms driving the dialectical spirit of Freud. Here, I offer some neuropsychoanalytic and Lacanian remarks on the RSE. Many have likened translation to analytic interpretation (interpretation-as-translation), what Solms calls translating formations of the unconscious into the “declarative language of the ego.” I will unpack the neuropsychoanalytic background condensed in this principle, specifically the brain’s multiple memory systems and Solms’s revision of the Freudian system unconscious. Additionally, I will elaborate Solms’s function as editor (not only translator) of the RSE through the Lacanian view of the analyst as editor of the patient’s speech (interpretation-as-edition). Punctuating, cutting, accenting, rearranging, and attuning to key signifiers produces effects at the levels of meaning and the feeling body. I will discuss how Solms’s editorial interventions – especially interrupting the text with Freud’s key German signifiers and the discussion of technical terms in Volume 24 – function as interpretation-as-edition. Discussion of the Volume 24 entry on Vorstellung will exemplify the value of interpretation-as-edition in tracking signifiers and the advantage of incorporating concepts from neighboring disciplines like neuroscience.