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The difficulties and relative unreliability of clinical interpretation suggest the need for greater understanding of the interpretive process itself. A good place to start is with two disciplines, structuralism and hermeneutics, that have contributed a great deal to an understanding of interpretation in many fields. Structuralism views all aspects of the mind in terms of relations rather than things. Human beings have a talent for recognizing relations and remembering them; for example, when attempting to explain something that is not understood, one often searches for a similar, simpler phenomenon that is understood. Though not identical, structuralism and the structural viewpoint in psychoanalysis have important similarities. The structuralist emphasis on relations and interrelationships suggests also some parallels with contemporary intersubjective-relational approaches in psychoanalysis. Among the numerous contributions
Dr. Rubovits-Seitz is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC; member of the Washington, DC, American, and International Psycho-Analytic Associations. Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic Associations.
of hermeneutics to clinical interpretation are the concept of “meaning types” and the justification of interpretations. Analogues of meaning types appear to exist in the realm of repressed meanings, and also have an important counterpart in the constructive process of the clinical interpretive process.