Beyond Interpretation: Analytic Interaction in the Interpersonal Tradition*

What psychoanalysts do is more a function of each uniquely individual analyst than theoretical allegiance per se. Nonetheless, the latter also normally has considerable significance. These conceptually based community ties (Aron, 1996; Greenberg, 1999) are often most evident around questions and controversies concerning the relative significance of interpretation in effecting mutative action. They also appear when we observe the contents of interpretations and how these commonly fall into clusters that are based on analysts' “school” or tradition. Sandler (1983), however, astutely observes that no one actually knows what analysts do behind closed doors. What is usually described in the literature is what we want our respective communities of cotheorists to know about us, and this normally conforms to “family” values. Sandler also suggests that analysts have what he calls “private theories” that are not necessarily in harmony with publicly shared ones. These private activities and theories coordinate with therapeutic interventions that may bear only marginal resemblance to written or oral reports in journals and conferences. With this caveat in mind I briefly trace the history of the community of interpersonal psychoanalysis and its intersection with the newer and broader designation, the relational perspective The analytic activities of these traditions, interpretation and beyond, are well characterized by Hoffman's (1998) discussions of spontaneity, or “throwing away the book,” while still adhering to psychoanalytic ritual, or “the book.”