ABSTRACT
If silence is at the heart of the therapist's inactive efforts, then interpretation and management of the ground rules are at the heart of his or her active efforts. The communicative definition of an interpretation extends well beyond the generally accepted but vague proposal that it renders conscious to the patient something that was unconscious. Thus, a communicatively drawn interpretation begins with the surface of the patient's material, because ideally the interpretation is concerned with a manifestly represented indicator and a direct allusion to the relevant intervention context. The focal point of the interpretation is the patient's immediate situation, along with the intervention to which the patient is reacting; other aspects of the patient's current and past life fan out from this point. Mastery of communicative interpretations and the play-back of selected derivatives is in most instances but half the job; the other half is managing and securing and/or rectifying the frame.
