Chapter 11 What does Interpretation Put into Words?

This chapter and the following one, like those of Part III, are about how analysts work with their patients. They are also, like the chapters of Part II, about theory. Behind what happens in the consulting room lies a theoretical hinterland which remains, for the most part, invisible.

Above all things, psychoanalysts listen. The nature of psychoanalytic listening is a theme running through this book. When their listening makes them think something needs to be put into words, analysts also make interpretations. But the word ‘interpretation’ does not only refer to certain kinds of utterance by the analyst. Interpretation is also an activity. It is something analysts do. This chapter investigates the nature of the activity which underlies the interpretations to which an analyst gives voice.

It may be assumed that, behind any given interpretation, there is a preexisting understanding in the analyst’s mind, and that what the interpretation does is to express in words that pre-existing thought. This takes interpretation to be a kind of translation activity, making something available to patients in language they can understand. In his paper ‘Remarks on the theory and practice of dream-interpretation’ Freud says, according to the Standard Edition, that ‘The interpretation of a dream falls into two phases: the phase in which it is translated and the phase in which it is judged or has its value assessed’ (Freud, 1923c: 111f). What Freud wrote would be better rendered as ‘the phase in which it is translated and the phase in which it is evaluated or made use of’.1 Freud’s clear implication is that behind the interpretation which an analyst puts into words there is a previous stage of interpreting which has gone on in the analyst’s mind. At this earlier stage, the analyst interprets to himself the meaning of a dream. Then comes the question of how this