ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews the main features of the interpretation of defense, that crucial aspect of clinical psychoanalysis. The psychoanalyst's professional career is devoted to constructing highly specialized versions of other persons undergoing analysis, that is, to know each analysand psychoanalytically. The chapter mentions that the analyst derives an interpretive description of the analysand's actions within a context of understanding that is itself the product of interpretations. The analyst's self-knowledge, too, may increase during the clinical process. The gaps in knowledge may be attributed to the analytic dialogue's selective narrative development and its system-regulated nature. The analyst assumes that whatever is done is done on the basis of the potentially interpretable beliefs and desires that constitute intentionality. Far-ranging eclecticism or too ready blurring of differences seriously compromises the idea of psychoanalysis as a discipline that yields communicable knowledge of other persons.
