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Critics of self psychology mistakenly assume that the therapeutic action of self psychology is primarily found in the provision of empathy. Thus, they conclude, somewhat dismissively, that self psychology is a superficial therapy because it is merely another version of the discredited corrective emotional experience. One of the reasons for the failure of critics to appreciate the richness and depth of the self psychological approach to treatment has been the difficulty for self psychology of incorporating the role of interpretation into the theory of selfobject functioning. The aim of this chapter is to locate interpretation firmly within the theory of selfobject functioning.
Traditionally, psychoanalytic theoreticians have sought the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis in various activities of the analyst. The Freudian school has located the therapeutic action in interpretation, conceptualized primarily as cognitive processes whereby the analyst transmits new knowledge or insight to the patient. Relational theorists have emphasized that the therapeutic action resides in the new experience that analyst and patient construct together out of their relationship. For self psychology, the therapeutic action is generally believed to derive from the provision of selfobject functions that mobilize thwarted developmental needs.
Interpretation is a term burdened with history. It derives from the classical literature where the focus was on making the unconscious conscious through attaching word cathexes to preconscious thoughts