ABSTRACT
Transformation of the self is the promise of psychoanalytic treatment, the ultimate therapeutic objective and justification for the time and financial and emotional investment involved. It strives to produce deep personality changes relief from symptoms and psychological suffering. Sigmund Freud did emphasize that in order to stimulate change interpretations required an emotional impact, abreaction, which gave the insight power. He regarded insight as an agent of self-transformation, conceptualized as self-regulation. Interpretation facilitates change by becoming part of an ongoing narrative, dialogue, and understanding that has ramifications for both patient and analyst. As his free-associative narrative and the transference relationship are interpreted to him, the patient negotiates an inner world that incorporates the new understanding. Psychoanalytic interpretation has suffered from this artificial division between body and mind. Interpretations are too often offered as abstractions to be assimilated by the patient's "mind."
