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At the Breakfast of the Editors and Guest Editors of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, during the APsaA January 2012 meeting in New York, Dr. Lichtenberg brought up an issue of interpretation in the current diverse psychoanalytic culture. The questions that were posed were: At a time when nonspecific relational aspects of a dyadic system are being emphasized, implicit relational knowing for example, has the role of interpretation changed? If yes, how? What is the role, significant of interpretation and its place in the effect of the verbal symbolic and metaphoric to effect a change? How is interpretation entwined with the spirit of inquiry, growth, openness, resilience, and creativity? Later, as the issue was being further conceptualized, we added the working title: “Interpretation—Then and Now: If, When, and How.” These thoughts and considerations were then sent to the prospective authors—the contributors of this issue—to engage, from whichever angle they find appropriate to their thinking and clinical work.
An ongoing debate concerning clinical and developmental psychoanalytic theory throughout the history of psychoanalysis, involving such issues as multifaceted character of memory, interaction of trauma and fantasy, deficit and conflict, pre-Oedipal and Oedipal, in the development of personality and pathogenesis, has had always significant implications for the view of the psychoanalytic process and the place of interpretation in it, generating various conclusions for successive generations of analysts. The major developments of last 30 years, including contemporary affective, embedded, and developmental neuroscience; infant observation studies; and comparative meta-analyses of clinical studies of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic and other therapies, have profound implications for the subject of interpretation, as well. In a sense, every theoretical debate will ultimately be “tested” in our clinical work, as we interpret (or not) what arises in the clinical situation.
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