What Is Interpretation In Psychoanalysis

Interpreting Interpretation

Psychoanalytic interpretation, according to the hermeneutic view, is concerned with meaning rather than facts or causes. In this provocative book, Elyn R. Saks focuses closely on what hermeneutic psychoanalysis is and how the approaches of hermeneutic psychoanalysts differ. She finds that although these psychoanalysts use the same words, concepts, images, and analogies, they hold to at least five different positions on the truth of psychoanalytic interpretations. Saks locates within these five models the thought of such prominent analysts as Roy Schafer, Donald Spence, and George Klein. Then, approaching each model from the patient’s point of view, the author reaches important conclusions about treatments that patients not only will-but should-reject.If patients understood the true nature of the various models of hermeneutic psychoanalysis, Saks argues, they would spurn the story model, which asks patients to believe interpretations that do not purport to be true; that is, the psychoanalyst simply tells stories that give meaning to patients’ lives, the truth of which is not considered relevant. And patients would question the metaphor and the interpretations-as-literary-criticism models, which propose views of psychoanalysis that may be unsatisfying. In addition to discussing which hermeneutic models of treatment are plausible, Saks discusses the nature of metaphorical truth. She arrives at some penetrating insights into the theory of psychoanalysis itself.

Beyond Interpretation

Hailed as "important book certain to stir extended psychoanalytic debate" (American Journal of Psychiatry) on publication in 1979, Gedo's Beyond Interpretation set forth a radically new theoretical framework and clinical agenda for modern psychoanalysis. The theoretical framework revolved around Gedo's reconceptualization of human personality as a hierarchy of personal aims culminating in a "self-organization." The clinical agenda followed from the need for interventions that regularly went "beyond interpretation" in helping patients cope with primitive illusions, failures of integration, and traumatization. In this extensive revision of the 1979 text, Gedo refines his original formulations in light of the empirical findings and clinical advances of the past 15 years.

The Facilitating Environment