ABSTRACT
Interpretation, as a word, suffers the fate of its own definition. That the word cannot be confined to a single meaning results both from its place in history, as well as from its carrying so heavy a responsibility. One interprets something at one time differently from at another—thus the role of history; and what something means is the essence of explanation—thus the burden. Psychoanalytic interpretation is doubly victimized since the mere intellectual or decoding aspect of the act of interpretation is never sufficient to fulfill what is asked of a comprehensive analytic definition. Rather, for psychoanalysis, interpretation is considered to be the basic vehicle of treatment; and so something in the definition must account both for what it means, and for what it does. There must be something in the knowing more than we did before or more than the knowing by itself that accounts for the change that we insist is the result of a proper interpretation.
