Use and Misuse of Analytic Interpretations by The Patient*

Every patient in psychoanalysis has naive opinions concerning interpretations: They represent for him, first, “pure nonsense” and, later, “magic formulas” like the “Open Sesame” of the fairy tale. In the early months of analysis the patient fights our interpretations as senseless “tricks”, and only gradually does he accept them first consciously, when his actions, feelings, and thoughts in the transference neurosis make his repetition repertoire abundantly clear, a situation which prompted the giving of those specific interpretations in the first place. After “working through” the specific initial resistances, the patient sooner or later arrives at the point where he exclaims: “All right, all right, my symptoms mean what you claim, but what of it? Yesterday I produced the symptom again. I gave myself your interpretation, and—nothing happened. The symptom just continued.” Here we have to explain that neurotic symptoms and signs don't dissolve immediately, and that conscious acceptance and unconscious acceptance are different things.

Since only affective, that is, unconscious acceptance helps, we shift once more the responsibility to the patient's unconscious, only to be confronted once more with the patient's accusation that we are using a trick and alibi.

The typical patient in analysis has a series of grievances against analytic interpretations in general. He is offended, first, by the fact that we ask his cooperation in the fight against his neurosis. He believes that analysis should be some sort of automaton: At every appointment you throw a few dollars into the machine, and success, or at least progress, neatly wrapped, comes out automatically. Second, he is offended by the amount of time needed for the “working through” process:† If the interpretation were any good, he argues, it would work more quickly. Third, he is furious that we show him