The Psychoanalytic Review. LXXIX, 1992.: The Timing of an Interpretation: A Comparative Review of an Aspect of the Theory of Therapeutic Technique. Lawrence Josephs. Pp. 31-54.

The timing of an interpretation is perhaps the most intuitive aspect of analysis and depends upon the analyst’s theory of therapeutic technique. Josephs examines 1) the foundational models; 2) deviations toward earlier interpretation of unconscious conflict; and 3) deviations toward increased emphasis on the therapeutic relationship and building psychic structure. He recommends that interpretative work facilitating the preconscious processes (e.g., the abilities to assimilate new interpersonal experience, to verbally formulate nonverbal experience, and to attain self-reflection) is an activity prerequisite to defense analysis. The analyst’s nonverbal participation is not just unconscious, automatic, and reactive, but can also be under volitional control. Types of nonverbal communication include providing a holding environment, avoiding premature disruption of selfobject transferences, and allowing enactment without intervention. Josephs suggests that for a particular patient “the more explicit focal awareness the analyst possesses of his or her preconscious volitional strategy of nonverbal intervention, the more accurate will be the self-appraisal of the nature of his or her nonverbal participation.”