The Role of Empathy and Interpretation in the Therapeutic Process: Commentary on Discussions of Salee Jenkins's Clinical Case*

In addressing Marian Tolpin's and Daniel Kriegman's interesting and radically different discussions of Salee Jenkins's fine clinical presentation, I highlight, discuss, and evaluate, as I see it, the essential points of each discussant. I close by adding a few ideas of my own to the discussion of empathy and interpretation.

I agree with Tolpin (2002) that “self psychology has set in motion a change in total attitude to the psychic work for patient and analyst” (p. 113). In her close tracking of Jenkins's (2002) clinical work, Tolpin contributes to and illustrates this change of attitude, anchored in her framework for interpretation that includes both “trailing” and “forward edge” transferences. Trailing edge transferences are revivals and repetitions of the decisive “childhood self-disorder and its genetic context origins now with the analyst … that exerts a compulsive unconscious influence on the self-organization and a powerful pull back to the most pathogenesis constellations and solutions of the past” (p. 114).…[The] “forward edge” transferences “are, at first, barely noticeable tendrils of stunted, thwarted, almost crushed self strivings,