On interpretation
19th October 2022
Melanie Klein delivered her Lectures on Technique (edited with a critical review by John Steiner in 2017) to Candidates of the British Psychoanalytical Society for the first time in 1936. In these lectures, Klein directly addressed the subject of interpretation, alongside the ‘analytic attitude’, transference and countertransference, phantasy and grievance.
At the time she began the lecture series, there had been quite a sea change in analytic technique, following Klein’s work on early anxiety situations and the defences against them. Psychoanalysts, she thought, were increasingly approaching anxiety more directly, regarding it as necessary to ‘liberate small quantities’ of anxiety in order to prevent a ‘dangerous accumulation’ of it (Klein, in Steiner, p.57). Interpretation, of course, was the analyst’s main means of achieving this.
Klein agreed with Strachey (1934), that an interpretation could be felt by both patient and analyst as a ‘magic weapon’ (Steiner, 2017, p.54). However, her Lectures suggest that she felt more that interpretations were ‘feelers towards the unconscious’, a ‘means of exploring… unconscious phantasy’ (Ibid, p.23), and hypotheses for the patient to consider, rather than ‘a way of providing knowledge or insight from on high’ (Ibid, p.14). Klein’s Lectures, Steiner remarks, ‘come across as entirely modern’ (p.1), and there is no doubt that her inclusion of vivid clinical material, to illustrate the impact of interpretation, makes them especially engaging.
Recently I have been exploring file PP/KLE/D.3 of the archive, which is entitled, ‘Notes on interpretation, notes on defences’. Here, Klein makes a number of other points about interpretation, which are interesting to consider alongside her Lectures on Technique. She addresses, for example, the importance for the analyst of being ‘self-critical enough’ to pace and judge the impact of their interventions, and also underlines the value of remaining silent on occasion, even for long periods - and even when the patient demands it.
In an early part of file D.3, Klein writes,
It seems to me a central problem for psychoanalysts… to decide the right balance between interpretation and allowing the patient’s associations and material free and uninterrupted flow. (PP/KLE/D.3; Image 5/85)
We no doubt develop each an individual technique, though based on certain fundamental principles, according to our personality and [the] particular gifts and deficiencies in us. Some people are quicker in seeing things, and for them the temptation to convey to the patient quickly might be greater. Others, being slower in their perception, and also less inclined to speak, might be inclined to wait too long and fall for this temptation. There is no danger either way if we are self-critical enough to watch our steps and the reasons for our mistakes. (Image 7/85)
On the matter of the analyst, on occasion, restricting his ‘talk and interpretations’, Klein emphasises the need to ‘silently co-operate’ with the patient, and to take into account the patient’s history. With reference to a child patient, she recalls,
I have tried not to interpret at the beginning of an analysis [and] I [shall] give one instance of the kind. [In the case of a] boy who didn’t speak for so long, [I] refrain[ed] from interpreting for some weeks in order to gain the confidence of the child through more or less silent cooperation. This child had a father who had overwhelmed him with speech and constant interference, and the silence of the child was in some way connected with this attitude of the father. This attempt was instructive because, when I did take up interpretations, the difference it made in the progress of this analysis was all the more striking. (Image 9/85)
Klein emphasises, as she had in her earlier Lectures, that,
…we must keep our minds and technique flexible. There are cases, and this child was one of them, in which we might have very much to restrict our talk and interpretations, and miss interpretations rather than stir too much anxiety. (Image 9/85)
Later on, Klein stresses that the patient should always feel he has enough ‘free rope’ to talk. However, even in the case of silent patients, she suggests that plenty of room should be left by the analyst, though it may be tempting to say more:
[...] even silent patients sometimes cannot bear at certain stages of the analysis the analyst’s talking. There is nothing easier than to overdo one or the other attitude. I found that with great care and patience, one can arrive at a compromise in these cases, and that having given the patient free reign for the largest part of the hour or complied with his necessity to remain silent for a time, I could bring in some interpretations at some junctures, or at the end of the hour. (Image 11/85)
Finally, Klein gives the example of another young patient who literally restricts the amount of words Klein can use in an interpretation. Klein shows that her compliance with the patient’s demands enables the analytic work to go on until such time as the patient can tolerate her more usual way of making interpretations:
An extreme case was a boy with strong psychotic and delinquent features and liable to great violence, with whom I could at some stages of the analysis only interpret when he gave me formal permission for it. At hours of great anxiety it happened that the only interpretation could be given when he was already going out of the door from the hall. A few times he restricted me to giving the interpretation in 10 words, and it was not a small feat to put the most important interpretation into these 10 words. But I did not find even in this extreme case that I had to stick to this method. As soon as anxiety had diminished I could interpret more again, and strikingly enough even the 10 word interpretations couched in the most important words only, had repeatedly the effect of diminishing anxiety as well as the fact that I had submitted to this condition, I proceeded to more normal ways of interpretation. (Images 11/ and 13/85)
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References:
Steiner, J (2017) Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein. Routledge.
Strachey, J (1934) ‘The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis’. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 15:127-159.
