Once More the Question of Revising the Standard Edition

The Strachey Standard Edition of Freud's works, published between 1953 and 1974, was then, and still is, a great scientific and literary achievement. The replacement of earlier diverse translations which often misinterpreted and misrepresented Freud's writings, which conflicted with each other and confused the reader, by a uniform edition, the work of translation for which was shared among a small, highly skilled, knowledgeable team of psychoanalysts who devoted a massive amount of attention to issues of terminology and to the clarification of concepts, was greeted with almost universal praise, admiration and gratitude. It was a great psychoanalytic publication, a considerable financial risk.

Generations of psychoanalysts have been raised on Strachey. They have learned from his great editorial achievement in tracing the historical development of Freud's concepts and classifying the constant revisions Freud made, either in the light of further analytical experience and increased theoretical sophistication, or in response to criticism of his ideas. They have appreciated the magisterial quality of Strachey's prose and the cool clarity of style of a writer nourished on the European tradition of classical translation. Few at the time questioned whether Strachey's translation represented as authentic a version of Freud's ideas as was attainable. The authority of Anna Freud reinforced this almost universal acceptance.

The appearance of a Standard Edition also met conscious and unconscious needs. It satisfied the profession's longing for authenticity, and fostered the belief that non-German-speaking psychoanalysts could now hear Freud's language directly, free of the distortions that earlier translations were alleged to display. Here at last was a 'true' translation that met the needs of a large number of psychoanalysts who regarded themselves as a scientific community and who needed to bind themselves together through a codified language (Steiner, 1988). Strachey's