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Interpretation is a fundamental tool in psychoanalytic practice. Along with transference and knowledge of the unconscious world, it constitutes a leading feature of the psychoanalytic scene. The article by Keogh and Gregory-Roberts proposes the use of interpretation as a technique to introduce the couple to awareness of a process that involves them both and in which they repeat unconscious, archaic, childhood patterns. I shall discuss three points that I consider essential:
Interpretation in the initial interviews, as part of the psychoanalytic assessment.
Co-therapy with couples.
Reflexive interventions.
Couples rarely consult us merely out of curiosity. Each person who comes to us is moved by some symptomatic urgency that expresses a range of painful experiences. With couples this is especially true; we receive requests for help when the difficulties have evolved into a serious crisis, or an imminent separation is at stake.
The question about what causes the conflicts that have come to rest in the relationship forms part of a contract that gathers the actors of the therapeutic scenario in a joint task; their task centres on a relationship and its history that has been built by more phenomena than can be attributed to a particular member. (Leisse de Lustgarten, 2016, translated for this issue)