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For the past decade, David Lichtenstein has cultivated a remarkable forum for psychoanalytic discourse in his role as editor of DIVISION/Review. Most notable has been his curation of a space where varied contributions, including empirical research, meditations on poetry, debates on technique, book reviews, political engagements, photography, and personal reminiscences on psychoanalytic masters have interlaced while maintaining a rigorous quality of scholarship. David, with the support of senior and contributing editors, has set an exacting standard for DIVISION/Review, to the great benefit of not only Division 39 members, but an entire international readership.
To inherit carries both burden and promise. Freud twice quoted—twenty-five years apart—Goethe's Faust: “What thou hast inherited from thy fathers, acquire it to make it thine” (Freud, 1913/1955, 1938/1964). In these texts, Freud was struggling with the enigma of inheritance and transmission across generations. Through various idioms—such as oral tradition, phylogenesis, the superego, and identification—Freud highlighted the burden of inheritance, its imposition of individual and collective debt, that nevertheless is appropriated in singular ways. Therefore, in assuming the role of editor, I am faced with an inevitable disquiet. My responsibility is to find a unique voice within this tradition memorialized on the pages of past issues of DIVISION/Review. To this aim, I seek to sustain the publication as space for