Interpretation Beyond Meaning. A Brief Discussion of Virginia Ungar's Keynote Presentation1

With interpretation at the centre of her attention, Virginia Ungar offered us a clear and eloquent articulation of a number of important elements of psychoanalysis, linking the act of analyzing to our present social and cultural juncture. In so doing she has elicited in me many reflections which I can only offer here in a very compressed form.

I'll start from the view that psychoanalysis is first and foremost a practice implementing a short list of rules such as free association and evenly suspended attention. These define a specific attitude regarding speech, unique to the Freudian method, following which the analytic exchange is an odd kind of dialogue. Indeed the one who mainly speaks is asked to do so without putting much effort into making sense, and the one who mainly listens does so in an oblique, unfocussed way.

This should already alert us to the fact that, emerging from such a rather odd context, « interpretation » is in an awkward position. Free association and evenly suspended attention, indeed, do not directly convey any meaning – actually, they do quite the opposite – and therefore if by « interpretation » we mean the hermeneutic construction of meaning, then this comes in a second moment of the process.

In her paper Virginia Ungar calls interpretation a tool and she shows how the usage of that tool is different today from what it was when she started her practice. I am not sure about the word « tool », but, at any rate, I believe she is right in suggesting that the present context requires that we re-examine our analytic toolbox.

Virginia has also attracted our attention toward the paternal function which in turn makes us reflect on the place and role of the Oedipal myth in the contemporary psychoanalytic discourse. I will try to show that these two elements (father function and Oedipus) are in fact related to our conception of interpretation and I hope to push Virginia's reflection one step further.

It may be useful to remind ourselves that Oedipus is a myth that Sophocles, and through him, Freud, have used to convey a certain idea of the human condition. As such, it can be deemed not so much a psychoanalytic concept as a reference frame, a speakable form that can be given to the wordless drama that each human being has to face. The attribution of this form is the equivalent, at the cultural level, of what Freud has formulated as the general purpose of analysis: « Where it was, there I shall become », a work of civilization indeed. For thinking subject to emerge, speakable forms must be given to an otherwise unspeakable otherness we call the unconscious. The Oedipal form was uncovered by Freud in the deep folds of our cultural heritage, which means that it is not itself « the unconscious thing » but one of its powerful narratives. At its core, the Oedipus complex provides precious insights into the detours taken by human desire. But, for all its importance in Western culture, there is no reason to believe that it is the only possible narrative or that it will always espouse the classical form it had until now. Changes in this domain, however, may only become noticeable in retrospect, at some future epoch.

In the meantime, following Virginia, a fresh look at the new parentality shows us that while the drama remains essentially the same (What is my place in my family or among the generations? What does the other want of me? What am I allowed to desire?), the social and psychological configurations do change, imaginary forms and symbolic structures will eventually be modified by new historical conditions; what will not change, however, is the real, the psychic reality, re-defined by Laplanche as the sexually compromised message

of the other. In this regard, and until recently in Western society, we could perhaps assert that the dominant role in formulating the culturally admissible translation of these messages belonged to the figure of the father. It is therefore probably not by chance if psychoanalysis was traditionally thought to operate through interpretation, and that for a long time the prevailing idea of interpretation was of the kind that Virginia has presented to us in her first and older example. It was indeed the sort of interpretation given by the analyst-as-father (regardless of the analyst's actual gender).

So, if the classical Oedipal narrative, the analyst as imaginary father figure, and the traditional form of interpretation are closely knit together, then they are bound to be revisited together. Today analyst and patient appear more like partners; the analyst is more of a commentator than the voice of the Truth, and Virginia seems to be of the same opinion. Apophantic interpretation seems a relic of the past, a change that parallels the waning of the father figure in the outside world and in the analytic room. This idea of partnership, however, calls for a caveat, about which later.

In « Constructions in analysis » Freud, after having remarked that when, in analytic papers, authors spoke of interpretations they actually meant constructions, he endeavoured to establish a clear distinction between the two (S.E., 23, page 261). I wonder how many analysts today care to make such a distinction in their daily practice and I cannot go into this discussion today. But what I wish to highlight is that, in spite of their differences, the two elements have one thing in common: in both cases the analyst carries a hermeneutical task; in both he is the purveyor of meaning and is therefore more on the side of synthesizing than of analyzing. In view of which, we could go as far as asking if it is the role of the analyst to give interpretations at all! Should indeed the production of meaning be the analyst's responsibility? Or should it be to… analyze?

Interpretation, as we have seen, does not directly flow from free associations and evenly suspended attention. Further work is required from both partners. If the interpretation is formulated, as Virginia's first example shows, outside of a cooperative work done with the patient, the analyst then incarnates the omniscient father. Her young patient was very keen with his remark: « Oh, yes.. I came here for you to tell me that I have to come », much in the same way Little Hans, after being given by Freud an authoritative interpretation, wondered if « the Professor talks with God ».

In the paper on constructions, Freud offers a blatant example of the sort of intervention in which the analyst is the possessor of truth: « Up to your nth year you regarded yourself as the sole and unlimited possessor of your mother; then came another baby… » (S.E., 23, page 261) Today we are aware that no such « final edition » can be achieved, and, ironically, we know this thanks to Freud's own study of the process of permanent re-transcription – or re-translation – of memory traces3. In a working mind there is indeed no reason for the mechanism of après coup to stop at one given version; any understanding that was reached can, and eventually will, under new circumstances, be subjected to re-analysis and reinterpretation.

In the wake of Virginia's reflections regarding subjectivation, I would submit that not only there are important changes in subjectivity, but that we are now aware that the subject is constantly producing new drafts of his subjectivity rather than remaining a fixed character playing in what Daniel Dennett called the Cartesian theatre4. It seems to me therefore that, in line with this more contemporary conception, Virginia has understandably and rightfully moved to « a style of psychoanalytic interpretation […] based primarily upon the possibility of observing and describing, not of explaining. » (p. 14)

Observing and describing are indeed closer to the idea of a partnership where the patient is given more room as a subject than was customary, but I wish to insist—here is my caveat—that this still requires a specific skill on the part of the analyst. For while it is true that at one level of description, analyst an analysand are indeed « partners in thought »(Donnel Stern), or engaged in what Daniel Widlöcher has called « co-pensée » (co-thinking), still, we cannot let go of the idea that such partnership is in no way symmetrical. I am referring here to Laplanche's view of the analytic setting as unavoidably seductive; one more reason to ask if analyzing is the same thing as giving and interpretation, and to beware of the great seductive power of the analyst's interventions.

In her contemporary view, Virginia sees interpretation as an invitation to do analytic work (p. 14). True to the spirit of Freud's paper I quoted above, she also says that the invitation takes the form of conjectures offered to the patient. On this I have two things to say: One is that it is probably impossible not to offer conjectures to our patients (sometimes even silent ones!) and in my own practice, too often I do just that. The second thing is that I just as often regret not having been able to

resist offering them. Is there a solution to this dilemma?

Agreeing with Virginia that interpretation must be revisited, I would suggest that the interpretation we try to arrive at is not a tool, but a provisional result which should be obtained mainly by cooperation between patient and analyst but, ideally, formulated by the patient alone.

In that sense, Virginia's notion of «invitation» resonates, to a certain extent, with Laplanche's view that the analytic setting is seductive – a strong sort of invitation indeed! – and that the analyst provokes the transference. An invitation or provocation to which the patient responds by producing material to be analyzed – i.e. dissected, unraveled – rather than hermeneutically interpreted. This is important if the analyst wishes to avoid operating a second, and avoidable, form of seduction. So, when Virginia invites us to move from explicating to observing and describing, she is pointing in the right direction. But I believe we can go one step further and assert that on top of – or beneath – the explanatory and descriptive aspects of analysis, a more fundamental role is played by the performative function of the analytic method. The method may seem to operate through the acquisition of meaning, but, again, meaning is the end-product, a sign indicating that an effective work of transformation (unraveling and translating anew) has been carried out. A work made possible by the analyst's capacity to accept and contain the transference while remaining the staunch guardian of his own enigma, concentrating on the analytic function while assisting the patient in his autonomous construction, or synthesis of meaning.

Obviously, this can never be perfectly achieved, but the idea here is similar to what regards free association, evenly suspended attention or neutrality: they too are, in the end, impossible tasks: what matters is the effort towards their implementation, for such effort puts the psychoanalytic « device » under a productive tension and reveals the points of resistance, inviting creative responses from both members of the dyad.