ABSTRACT

A re-examination of the status of classical interpretation is of professional, scientific, and social interest. Transference interpretations, being more intimate, made her most angry. However, she increasingly worked things out for herself, and with increasing success and security. Some do have an interest in interpretation from the beginning—they have some sense that their trouble can be alleviated when they understand themselves better. People get a sense of immense pain sometimes but, equally sometimes, a sense of no one at home. There is no core, no identity, only ego-nuclei. People have a patient without identity, no alliance can last. Patients and therapists have to work together to enable the patients to experience themselves in a new way. There is nothing new or out of the way about that. Patients tell us what they said, and what uncle said, and what they said, and so on, and people make our interpretive comment.