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My comments on the conference theme will start from seeing interpretation as a process. The holding environment in the psychoanalytic situation gives a setting and a ground which promote the process of interpretation. If you have a developmental aspect of psychoanalysis, the concept of holding has a place in the discussion about which elements are parts of the psychoanalytic situation and therapeutically effective. My discussion will deal with the complementary relationship between the elements of holding and interpretation.
If transference is formulated as a shaping of the past in the present, then the task of interpretation among other things is to give a new meaning to this. The interpretation implies not only to uncover, to turn the unconscious into something concious, but also has as its aim to shape a new meaning, a new organization and patterning of the perception of one' way of functioning in relation to oneself and to the world around. This transforming becomes possible when the analysand dares to leave old strategies for handling forces inside himself and in relation to the world around. To “get a language” is a bit of this organizing work, to get “names” for conflicts and their accompanying affects. Holding is that element which is shaping an atmosphere in which the analysand can feel himself capable of being open to new configurations in the perception of himself and of his relation to the world around, that is to be able to leave old strategies of defences which distort his perception. In order to dare to do this, the analysand must get a sufficiently good selfcathexis, which also facilitates a cathexis of the analyst.
Before going on in my discussion I will relate two anecdotes. The small child tells her mother: you see, you shall only be, only be … Then in the safe belief that her mother is there, that the mother has her child in her awareness, the child can go out to play and widen her world. Another time in the dialogue between the mother and her chil