ABSTRACT
Interpretation becomes a form of learning—or unlearning followed by learning—and, as a consequence, therapy becomes an educational process. Interpretation is one of the most central concepts of psychoanalysis, and requires a careful theorisation of its aims, methods and impasses. In his first formulations of analytic technique, S. Freud saw the aim of interpretation as accessing an unconscious train of thought. By the mid-1930s, Freud's thinking on interpretation had changed considerably. Interpretation aims to deprive the speaker of the moorings of their speech, allowing it to become strange and unfamiliar to them. Analytic interpretation for J. Lacan took on a new aim: to affect a sense that could not be expressed lexically. As Lacan developed his ideas of unconscious desire and language, he emphasised less their congruence than their "incompatibility". Lacan's idea was that one could try to access the dimension of writing within speech and then, perhaps, bring it back to speech.
