ABSTRACT

Words constitute the basic vehicle of the psychoanalytic situation: they are the means by which a symptom and its underlying structure are analysed, and as a result they are at the heart of the question of interpretation. The correctness of an interpretation is judged by whether or not it facilitates the production of more material; not by whether it has other effects on the analysand, whether the analysand refuses it or agrees to it, or whether the analyst is pleased with it. “Gross’ is then the term for the father who has ideas where his own father was without them: it is the link between stealing, eating, and plagiarising, as well as being the term which introduces lack, which brings into play the functioning of desire. A play is merely acted out against the backcloth of a faulty interpretation: an infantile drama remains within analysis if enough attention is given to what is being said.