The Language of Interpretation

Language is undoubtedly the primary path to consciousness and it is important to know how analytic interpretation exploits it towards this end.

The thought-processes as well as the thing-cathexes of the objects are in themselves unconscious and deprived of quality. Their capacity to become conscious is acquired only through being linked with the residues of perceptions of words and by the connected hypercathexis of the thing-presentation. This capacity is characteristic of the Pcs. and of that system alone because the conscious presentation comprises the presentation of the thing plus the presentation of the word belonging to it. And a presentation which is not put into words, or a psychical act which is not hypercathected, remains in the Ucs. in a state of repression (Freud, 1900), (1915a).

From our point of view, the major virtue of the analytic situation is that it permits the primary process to have full access to the thought-processes. Consequently, the interpretation of psychic conflict in the singular circumstances of the transference can be carried out according to the same rules as those governing the interpretation of dreams. This is not to say that regression in the analytic situation is identical to regression in dreams. In the former case, the psychic apparatus must accomplish a supplementary task: the translation of mnemic images into words. But thanks to the fluidity of cathexes which are characteristic of primary processes, transference thoughts will be submitted to the processes of displacement and condensation. Affect, in terms of the transference, will then constitute both the counter-cathexis that causes the rupture of the associative chain and the contribution of energy necessary for binding to recur.

The analytic situation therefore restores dreams and symptoms to their original status, fantasy. Moreover, it seems to me to be necessary to remember that within the analytic relationship the various sensorial images that contribute to the f