The 'Vehicle' of Interpretations

A new if rather circumscribed field for analytical research has recently been discovered, namely, the experiences of 'control' analysts. Obviously

these experiences deal mostly with the subjective side of analytic data, but I willingly plead guilty to the conviction that subjective factors require constant assessment during analytic work. In passing it may be remarked that the phrase 'control analysis' is rather misleading. It would be an overestimation of the activity to pretend that an analysis is 'controlled' in any executive sense. The procedure corresponds more to the control systems of scientific experiment, the control analyst offering from time to time his own mental reactions to the reported material in order to check the reactions of the analyst presenting the case.

In the course of 'controlled' analyses some questions crop up much more frequently than others. For example, one is asked frequently, 'What should I have said?'; less frequently, 'When should I have said it?'; one of the rarest of questions is, 'How should I have said it?'

As in the actual analysis of a patient, the answer, if any, to a question in 'control' work should itself be in the form of a question. Ask what the trouble was, and on many occasions an illuminating comment is made, summing up the situation pointedly but without animus. This comment is, of course, the missing interpretation. Other requirements being satisfied, it could have been given precisely in that form. On other occasions no such clear statement is forthcoming. We may then make suggestions as to the possible content and timing of our interpretation. But we ought to add that these suggestions are not binding as regards form and mode of delivery.

Now in adult analysis interpretations usually take the form of a plain statement delivered in tones devoid of active emotional stress, namely, an even conversational tone, neither too emphatic nor too lifeless. This is certainly the safest method in the sense that it p