ABSTRACT
The landmark contribution by Betty Joseph, "On Understanding and Not Understanding" (1983), explained and illustrated the value of the analyst's paying close attention to the meanings that analysands unconsciously ascribe to insight: both their fantasies about the insightful analyst's position in the clinical relationship and their fantasies about what they are letting themselves in for in that relationship and in their daily lives by possessing insight. Psychoanalytic understanding can also threaten to introduce turmoil into relations with others. The result of an analyst's missing an analysand's construal of termination in any of these ways is likely to be unnecessarily awkward and disappointing analytic experiences of termination for both participants, most of all, of course, for the analysand. Analyst-centered interpretation works this way by helping develop reflection on the process at a safe distance from the threatened self; one focuses on the analysand's experience of what the two participants are doing, whether collaboratively or in fantasized and unfortunately, sometimes actual antagonism.
