ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis may be characterized as an attempt to decode, that is, interpret, a patient’s communications according to a loosely drawn set of transformational rules concerning underlying meaning, motivations, and unities of thought.The analyst does his best to understand the patient’s communications as the patient intends them to be, but both patient and analyst are heavily influenced by a theory, or a group of theories, used by both parties. For example, patients have theories about the nature of responsibility and the causal agents of behavior; these theories may range from extremes of conviction that ‘everything is my fault’ to ‘nothing is my fault’ or from ‘I intended to do that’ to ‘something made me do that.’ Patients have theories about the nature of their motivation; some are convinced that all their actions are altruistic, while others believe that their most innocent thoughts are evidence of their murderous intent. Patients have theories about the sources of their behavior; some are firmly convinced that all their actions are explained by the nature of their nurturance, and others are convinced that only a bad fate could explain their lives.
