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Evolving Perspectives onInterpretation: ForewordJill R. Gardner Ph.D. a ba School of Social Service Administration, Universityof Chicagob private practice, Chicago, ILPublished online: 18 Sep 2009.

To cite this article: Jill R. Gardner Ph.D. (2009) Evolving Perspectives onInterpretation: Foreword, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 4:4,445-448, DOI: 10.1080/15551020903185808

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Evolving Perspectives on

Interpretation: Foreword

Jill R. Gardner, Ph.D.

he 29th annual international conference on the Psychology of theSelf, in 2006, focused on an exploration of significant changes in selfpsychology since the death of Heinz Kohut 25 years earlier. As part

of that exploration, I chaired a panel on “Evolving Perspectives on Inter-pretation,” which included original papers by Anna Ornstein and ShelleyDoctors. Edited versions of those papers are presented in the articles fol-lowing this foreword, along with comments by each author in reaction tothe ideas of the other. The following introductory remarks are intended toorient the reader to the material that follows, elucidating the historicalcontext from which these ideas emerged and the directions in which theauthors’ current thinking took them.

In the context-driven world within which we now know psychoana-lytic processes to occur, it may come as no surprise that a panel that starteddown a path of interpretation ended up somewhere slightly different, with afocus on therapeutic action and on the understanding and modification ofcomplex defensive structures. While the reader can observe how the au-thors stimulated each other to move in this direction, it is perhaps inevita-ble that a serious discussion of interpretation would lead to a discussion oftherapeutic action, given the role assigned to interpretation historically asthe primary agent of psychoanalytic change.

Interpretation is a foundational concept in all psychoanalytic thought.Every psychoanalytic endeavor, starting with Freud, has addressed the con-

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International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 4:445–448, 2009Copyright © The International Association for Psychoanalytic Self PsychologyISSN: 1555-1024 print / 1940-9141 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15551020903185808

Dr. Gardner is Adjunct Instructional Staff, School of Social Service Administration, Uni-versity of Chicago, and in private practice in Chicago, IL.

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cept in one way or another. Heinz Kohut originally tried to correct what hesaw as the over-emphasis on the explanatory function of interpretation byadding a focus on the understanding dimension. For Kohut (1984), inter-pretation involved both understanding and explaining. He also began to al-lude to the importance of the relational context, or the analyst’s humanpresence (see Doctors, this issue), in determining the effectiveness of inter-pretive remarks. Nevertheless, interpretation in general and interpretationof selfobject transference in particular remained the main vehicles for ther-apeutic action in Kohut’s theory.

Over the course of the 25+ years since Kohut’s death, we have seen aradical expansion of our understanding of both the meaning of interpreta-tion and the place of interpretation in our work. The dialogue on this topichas often been cast in terms of opposites: interpretation versus relationship;insight versus (new) experience; the cognitive versus the affective; or, morerecently, the verbal and explicit versus the nonverbal, procedural, and im-plicit. Yet we have now come to understand that these are false dichoto-mies: that any verbal interpretation is laden with relational, affective, andprocedural meaning; that all interpretation occurs in an intersubjectivelyconstituted relational context; and that much new understanding is com-municated and perceived outside of conscious awareness altogether, byboth partners in the therapeutic dialogue—and, I might add, never gets ver-bally articulated.1

Anna Ornstein (this issue) explores these developments in an articleentitled, aptly enough, “Do Words Still Matter?” Anna and Paul Ornsteinhave been writing about interpretation in self psychology almost since theinception of the theory (e.g., Ornstein & Ornstein, 1985). A. Ornstein hasalso had a sustained interest in the topic of defenses, starting with her clas-sic 1974 paper on the dread to repeat and the hope for a new beginning. Inthe article that follows here, she brings these two topics together by firstoutlining her current thinking on what she has called “speaking in the in-terpretive mode” and then focusing on how these ideas about interpreta-tion relate to dealing with the complex defensive structures seen in severepersonality disorders. Clinically, it is often the latter that prove to be thebiggest obstacle to therapeutic change.

The problem of the tenacity with which individuals cling to familiar,once adaptive, but now destructive modes of experiencing and relating

446 Jill R. Gardner

1Representative samples of these ideas can be found in Fosshage (2005), Lyons-Ruth(1999), and Schore (2002).

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to self and others has been taken up by every generation of psychoana-lytic clinicians since Freud introduced the concepts of repetition compul-sion and the adhesiveness of the libido. Self psychology has often beencriticized for not dealing sufficiently with these defensive constellations.Here the problem is taken up anew with a contemporary understandingof defensive phenomena, informed by both authors’ views on interpreta-tion.

Shelley Doctors (this issue) brings an intersubjective focus to the dis-cussion with an article entitled, “Interpretation as a Relational Process.”Doctors has a long-standing interest in how emotional experience becomespatterned and is transformed in specific intersubjective fields. So, in her ar-ticle, she emphasizes how the bi-directional dyadic context in which inter-pretive activity occurs may serve to either limit or enlarge what can bethought, what can be known, and what can be communicated. Ultimately,then, that context largely determines what can be interpreted and what isinterpreted.

In her reactions to Ornstein’s (this issue) article, Doctors (this issue)further elaborates the difference between defensive patterns and accom-modations the patient “needs” to repeat and those the patient “dreads” re-peating. Both have their origin in the imperative to preserve ties to utterlyneeded attachment figures.

Both Ornstein (this issue) and Doctors (this issue) look at interpreta-tion as an ongoing, dialogic process. For Ornstein, it is a process of “commu-nicating understanding,” whereas for Doctors it is one of “illuminatingmeaning”—a difference more semantic than substantive. Ultimately, bothauthors are concerned with how enduring change is facilitated in the clini-cal situation. They are attempting to illuminate what enables change, newexperience, and new ways of being and relating to become enduring aspectsof the patient’s self—whether self is conceptualized in terms of internal psy-chic structure, functional capacities, or organizations of experience. Bothconclude that verbal interpretations continue to play a unique and essen-tial role in the process of therapeutic change, even while recognizing thatthose interpretations involve so much more as well.

References

Fosshage, J. (2005), The explicit and implicit domains in psychoanalytic change. Psychoanal.Inq., 25:516–539.

Kohut, H. (1984), How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Evolving Perspectives: Foreword 447

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Lyons-Ruth, K. (1999), The two-person unconscious: Intersubjective dialogue, enactive re-lational representation, and the emergence of new forms of relational organization.Psychoanal. Inq., 19:576–617.

Ornstein, A. (1974), The dread to repeat and the new beginning: A contribution to the psy-choanalysis of narcissistic personality disorders. Ann. Psychoanal., 2:231–248.

Ornstein, P. & Ornstein, A. (1985), Clinical understanding and explaining: The empathicvantage point. In: Progress in Self Psychology, Volume l, ed. A. Goldberg. New York:Guilford, pp. 43–61.

Schore, A. (2002), Advances in neuropsychoanalysis, attachment theory, and trauma re-search: Implications for self psychology. Psychoanal. Inq., 22:433–484.

Jill R. Gardner, Ph.D.180 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1915Chicago, IL 60601312–444–1915jrgardner@sbcglobal.net

448 Jill R. Gardner

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