On The (Presumed) Authority Of Interpretations

This little essay wants to trip a light fandango of free association, but I shall grip the reins and steer it toward an issue in therapy that I have often pondered—namely, the merit of validating either the analyst' or the patient' claim that some particular interpretation or intervention has played a major role in promoting analytic progress. I have had occasion to note considerable disparity between patients' post facto assessments of therapeutic milestones and my own. These occur most frequently in the context of the patients' summing up at the end of treatment. An analytic comment that seemed quite ordinary at the time may be recalled by patients as their “Open Sesame” to a new vista. An empathic utterance of my own that seemed inspired to me had never been thus enshrined in the patient' memory. In one instance a mild question put to a woman on a hot day,“Would you like me to open the window?” turned out six years later to have been misheard as a caustic suggestion that she jump out of the window, but had been secretly treasured by her as “the one thing that kept me in treatment, because I knew from that, that you were tough enough to take everything I had to dish out.” Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Whether as a matter of general principle or for reasons specific to my particular analysis (approx. ), Dr. Hyman Spotnitz was not disposed to explain the motivations or feelings underlying his infrequent communications, although he sometimes agreed with my verbalized assumptions when I asked.