Interpretations couched in the poetic style

In addition to the issues of content, timing and depth of interpretation in the service of enabling insight, recall, or deepening of the analytic regression, we might consider the more intangible manner, or style, in which the interpretation is offered. Several writers (Fenichel 1941, Glover 1955, Kris 1951, Ornstein and Ornstein 1975) have raised the possibility that what the patient receives and absorbs of the analyst's communications is not only a function of what is said but, on a more subtle level, how it is said. When interpreting, the analyst often subordinates image to idea, so that what emerges is treatise, polemic, or catechism-anything but revelation or a deeper vision. In contrast, in poetry we experience the most effective, the most concentrated and emotionally textured communication man has, as yet, devised. It is through richly layered imagery that the poet works to create those fusions of echoed meanings that can set off landslides of resonating associations in readers. Can we, then, learn from the poet, for our interpretive interventions, something about the art of expression? This paper addresses an issue of style of interpreting, one of concretizing images of the patient's underlying psychic states.