Theory and Practice of Interpretation in Psychoanalysis

This master’s thesis, based on publications in foreign psychoanalytical periodicals and monographs by the world’s leading psychoanalysts, such as M. de M’Uzan, H. Kohut, P. Aulagnier, O. Avron etc., is dedicated to the study of the place of interpretation in the analytical process, its interaction with idealization, its role in individual sessions and group psychodrama, its connection to the issue of identification of individuals and nations. The universal character of interpretation is proven by theoretical and practical examples from several natural, applied and human sciences (notably neurobiology and Egyptology) and by investigating cases from the global psychoanalytical practice. Resulting from the undertaken research, the authors reach a number of conclusions that interpretation depends on mechanisms that assure the functioning of memory, and the functioning of interpretation itself obeys Darwinian natural selection; interpretation occurs both with the analyst and the patient during the analytical situation, and can itself be interpreted; manner, character and efficiency of interpretation depend on the analyst’s personal interpretational style; the majority of theoretical applications and discoveries occur not solely in mind, but rather in the lived experience of the session; interpretation operates as the transformational agent in the analyst’s mental process, and the emerging moment of an urgent necessity of interpretation plays the role of the catalyst for the psychoanalytical process.