In a world ravaged by war and sexual violence, a new edition of the great psychoanalyst’s works is a reminder of his continuing relevance
In 1935, Sigmund Freud wrote to a distraught mother that her son’s suspected homosexuality was no cause for lament, “nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation. It cannot be classified as an illness.” If her son was unhappy and neurotic, analysis might release him from his distress and help him live a more creative life, but it would not, nor should it aim, to make him “straight”. No “conversion therapy” as we might say today. On another occasion, Freud insisted that homosexuality should not be grounds for anyone to be summoned to a court of law.
Shocking for their time, these statements point to an aspect of Freud’s writing that is little known. Both appear for the first time in English in the just published Revised Standard Edition of Freud’s complete psychological works – a much-anticipated publishing venture and a feat of scholarship that, under the editorship of Mark Solms, has been in preparation for three decades. Readers can now access a full bibliography of Freud’s writings, which has expanded from 368 items in the previous Standard Edition of Freud’s works, overseen by James Strachey, to 1,730 today. What this edition also establishes, at a time when questions of sexuality and war have never been more fraught, is just how much Freud still has to say to us today.
Jacqueline Rose is co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Her latest book, The Plague: Living Death in Our Times, was published last year
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