Psychoanalysis, conceptualized as having to transform unconscious meanings into language, must come to terms with patients' texts having differing formal structure. The author applies an interpretive system to three different texts—a newspaper commentary, a fairy tale, and an excerpt of a novel—in order to disclose the meaning of each as revealed in its formal structure. Argelander asserts that, contrary to a text interpretation, a psychoanalytic interpretation must be able to reformulate a linguistically conveyed text so that described events can be seen as having come about through personally motivated actions and so that the explanation for this can be derived from the life history. This conception clearly converges with the action theory developed by Roy Schafer.