ABSTRACT
Interpretation occupies a special place in the literature on psychoanalytic technique. Menninger points out that interpretation is a rather presumptuous term, loosely applied by (some) analysts to every voluntary verbal participation made by the analyst in the psychoanalytic treatment process. The 'art of interpretation' demanded of the analyst has come to mean the art of making a successful verbal intervention of a particular sort rather than the art of understanding the unconscious meaning of the patient's material. Attempts to narrow the concept of interpretation have a secondary effect on interpretative technique, particularly if certain interpretations are thought to be the only 'good' interventions. Such an effect has been evident in regard to the value put on transference interpretations which, because they have been regarded by some analysts as the 'proper' form of interpretation, have become the only ones given by them.
