Interpreting: for whom, and why?

It is conceivable that interpretation in psychoanalysis forms part of a vast hermeneutic question. Reflections based on this position are undeniably enriching for psychoanalysis in general. My statement, however, is more limited, for what I am essentially concerned with here is the analyst’s interpretive activity in the analytic situation. Now while the communications delivered in colloquiums or congresses are often brilliant, and even if they are a source of pleasure, they do not always contribute anything tangible to practice itself. I have thus been led to wonder, with myself primarily in mind and not without a certain irony, if our exchanges in these diverse circumstances are not comparable to the intellectual operations required by the game of chess, which are only useful for the game of chess and strictly for nothing else. If that is the case, then our activity in our colloquiums simply ensures that our exchanges of ideas in the following colloquiums will be of better quality. Of course, I am not putting forward this hypothesis without reservations, but it seems to me that if we consider the concrete conditions of interpretation in analytic treatments, we are justified in giving it some attention. Indeed there exists a sort of tension that is no doubt fruitful between, on the one hand, the innovations, theoretical audacity and technical boldness legitimated in part by the cross-fertilization of ideas that occurs during our meetings and, on the other, ordinary practice whose foundations are assured.† And as the most innovative intuitions, but ones that are also full of uncertainties, are only conceivable when underpinned by a lucid and controlled conception of daily practice, the principles of such practice must be subject to renewed critical examination.

Leaving to one side the role of personal analysis, which is not part of the statement I am making here, we can say that in practically all the phases of his career, the analyst “functions” first of all, economi