The Maturational Interpretation

The growth of understanding about the curative factors in analytic psychotherapy is reflected in changing emphases in interpretation. It was originally thought that what healed a person was the recall of memories. Treatment was then regarded as incomplete unless, in Freud's words, “all obstacles in the case are explained, the gaps in memory are filled out, and the original occasions of the repressions discovered.” When it became evident that the memories were less important than that which prevented their recall, interpretations were made to overcome these repressive forces, manifested as resistance. Later, resistance was recognized as an important source of interpretive data because it told the story of the ego's development. Interpretations stressed the constrictive influence that resistance had exerted and the need to modify it. The analyst worked to resolve resistance in order to create more favorable psychological conditions for ego functioning. Explanations were oriented toward the integration of the ego and the acquisition of insight.

More recently, growing knowledge of the communication function of resistance has stimulated other approaches to interpretation. As yet, these have not dispelled the misleading notion that therapeutic change issues primarily from objective understanding of one's behavior. In the professional literature, interpretation is still most commonly associated with such words as “call attention to,” “convince,” “point out,” “alert,” “demonstrate,” “prove,” “confront,” and “unmask.” But the use of interpretation primarily for veil-lifting purposes is waning, with the recognition that other aspects of the treatment relationship