Interpretations and Their Consequences in Adolescents

It has always been Difficult for analysts to agree about the specific elements in psychoanalysis that are responsible for psychic change. Although “making the unconscious conscious” and “experiential knowledge” rather than just intellectual understanding are considered necessary, disagreement still exists over how the analytic experience leads to psychic change.

Interpretations are an essential technical tool in psychoanalysis; by exposing conflictual elements within the patient, enhancing the patient's simulataneous observation and experiencing of his psychic structure at work, and calling his attention to aspects of important relationships (past and present, real and fantasized), as they emerge in the transference, they make a major contribution to the development of insight. What remains elusive and difficult to substantiate is the link between interpretations, the development of insight, and change in psychic functioning, as well as where in the analytic process the change occurs. What to interpret, when to interpret, how to make the awareness of previously unconscious wishes and fantasies truly useful — these are subtle technical questions for which there is no single answer. But not only is there no set answer for these technical questions, the more fundamental question of the value and role of interpretations is also unresolved.