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PSYCHOANALYSIS IS INTERPRETATION. FREUD CALLED HIS BASIC WORK The Interpretation of Dreams. The essential activity of the psychoanalyst is to interpret. The psychic life of the individual is interpreted in new ways whereby it assumes meanings and an inner coherence which heretofore were not apparent. Consequently,
the meaning of what we call psychical or mental has changed. Man has gained a new power of understanding, and of thereby influencing, human life, by the observation and discovery of phenomena and events hitherto unknown or unheeded, by interpreting them in a manner which so far had not been applied to psychic life, and by bringing known psychological observations and activities within the context of that new interpretation, i.e., by understanding them differently.
Interpretation—we have no other way of applying our mind, whether in observation and understanding or in action. It is only when a context of meanings, when interpretations have become commonplace that we speak of the material in question as "facts." Then we tend to deal with the material in the manner of our dealings with chairs and tables, forgetting or disregarding the mental activity of interpretation which is embodied in it but is now hidden. Even chairs and tables are such only within the context of our understanding use of them and are oddly shaped and assembled pieces of stuff outside this context.
Psychoanalysis is, however, a special case. Its essence is inte