Psychoanalytic Interpretation in Modern, Clinical Perspective—"A Flight from History"1

THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to offer an updated, clinical version of interpretation in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic practice. The art of interpretation is now considered part of a distinctly dynamic process within an intersystemic, or interpersonal frame of reference. A change has taken place in the way primary, clinical data are obtained and incorporated in the therapeutic process. In particular the great complexity of the relationship between past and present has emerged as an intricate field of investigation which has largely replaced the emphasis on cause and effect. In a similar vein the relation between fact and fiction, truth and figure of truth has assumed a different significance. Earlier criteria for pursuing the truth based on the principles of the natural sciences have become problematic when applied to the human condition. In its place the intermingling of fictive, subjective or experiential components with factual data in the analytic process has taken on a more prominent position in the complex process of interpretation.

Viewed from a one dimensional position, interpretation is a rather presumptuous term, as Karl Menninger pointed out many years ago. The term tends to imply a measure of factuality and authenticity while minimizing its basic subjective quality.

Clinically speaking, interpretations run the gamut from tentatively trying on a thought or observation for size to the point of