ABSTRACT
The question of whether interpretation continues to play a significant part in the practice of psychoanalysis today has been the subject of considerable debate. Arguments which have been advanced that it is no longer adequate to speak of interpretation in terms of the clarification of hidden meaning, or rendering what was unconscious conscious, carry considerable weight. Lalangue becomes significant within the theoretical articulations concerning interpretation when interpretation is addressed not simply to the meaning of speech, but to jouissance embodied in speech. Lalangue takes up the living structure of language—the visceral structure of language in which meaning is tied to jouissance. The logic of interpretation as the art of producing a point of necessity in discourse, necessarily moves the discourse of the analysis to an encounter with a real, a knowledge that it is impossible for the subject to rejoin.
