The title of this symposium, “What Analysts Do: Interpretation and Beyond,” implies that much of what an analyst does is beyond both the interpretation of unconscious fantasies and working within the transference. I both agree and disagree with this premise. I will try to explain this by discussing modifications within analytic technique and then my own views of “beyond interpretation.”

First: my observations on the changing views of transference. In my psychiatric residency at Albert Einstein, we attempted to use classical psychoanalytic technique with almost all psychotherapy patients. At the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1964 to 1969, I was taught classical psychoanalysis, not psychotherapy. Isakower (personal communication), with his caustic wit, described alternative approaches as “psychoanalytically disoriented psychotherapy.” Kurt Eissler (1953) coined the term “parameter” to describe deviations from classical technique, such as he had used with delinquents.