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In recent years, you've written a good deal about ambiguities in psychoanalysis and how they obstruct the work. Is “interpretation” also one of those ambiguous words?
I've written that an excess of ambiguities obstructs both clinical work and advances in our discipline at large. As a matter of fact, a certain degree of ambiguity is useful. It allows data that we haven't entirely yet understood to be gathered in for further study, data that might otherwise be passed over. A science that neglects what is does not yet understand is sterile. Interpretation is one of our appropriate ambiguities, although perhaps by now it too is bordering on excess.
How would you define interpretation?
I'd prefer to outline descriptive categories for study rather than merely offer a definition. For example, I suspect that you would be interested in the context or the climate of interpretations.
I would imagine that the content would be more interesting.
The context is as important as the content, and both shape the intent of the interpretation.