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Psychoanalysis has traditionally focused on transference interpretation as the most important component of the analytic process. Analysands confronted the juxtaposition of the archaic object differentiated from the real interpreting analyst. Without the patient experiencing the distortion of the analyst as love-hate object representation or internalized object relations of the past, interpretation would supposedly not eventuate in mutative insight. Insight was mainly concerned with the unconscious becoming conscious and this outcome was best achieved in the here and now of the psychoanalytic situation. For some analysts, only what is observed in the analytic situation can be considered as analytic data. I shall rather emphasize the interaction and integration of transference and extra-transference interpretation, largely derived from patient reports of relationships other than with the analyst (Blum, 1983; Stone & Halpert, 1984; Haesler, 1991).
Extra-transference interpretation has usually been regarded as ancillary, complementary to, and synergistic with transference interpretation (Strachey, 1934; Gill, & Hoffman 1982). In contrast, it has been regarded as a defensive avoidance of the analytic transference. Freud (1912/1958) had early emphasized the major role of transference analysis as a resistance as well as a reliving of the infantile neurosis (Greenson, 1967). Later, Freud wrote of interpretation inside and outside the transference, including the present and past life situations of the patient. It may be noted that transference is ubiquitous so that extra-transference interpretation would apply to transferences in everyday life, other than transference to the analyst. Freud (1937/1964) also emphasized the importance of reconstruction of the patient's childhood. Reconstruction and genetic interpretation are clearly non-transference interventions, although transference and reconstruction are reciprocally informative in the analytic process. Over time, there has