On the interpretive process in psychoanalysis

The concept of interpretation and its function in the psychoanalytic process is updated by emphasizing the analyst's contributions to the psychoanalytic treatment process through his interpretations of resistance and transference. By incorporating Kohut's recent contributions to the psychoanalysis of narcissistic personality disorders into our general considerations regarding the process of interpretation, we have been aided in our effort to unify the theory of the psychoanalytic treatment process. We offer a broadened definition of the interpretative process and stress the added "interpersonal" dimension of resistance and transference, namely, those elements in the development of both, which are affected by the analyst;s personality and the manner of his interpretive and noninterpretive interventions. This makes the artificially sharp dichotomy between verbal and nonverbal interpretations or between interpretations and noninterpretive interventions unnecessary. The recognition of the "self-object" role of the analyst in the narcissistic transferences not only lends more precision to our understanding of archaic narcissistic experiences (whishes, demands, fantasies, etc.), but makes their interpretation within the transference our preferred analytic response. The need to foster the so-called "real relationship" between patient and analyst and the need to deal with such "nontransference" aspects of the relationship noninterpretively is thus replaced with interpretive interventions. To underline our emphasis on the analyst;s contributions to the analytic process, clinical samples and brief vignettes illustrate the manner in which interpretations may retard or promote the analytic process.