Translational Aspects of Interpretation Today: A Developmental and Dynamic View

Abstract

The methodology of psychoanalytic interpretation was originally built on Freud’s view of neuroses as a faulty translation between various systems of experience with different processing codes.

In this article, I attempt to bring this earliest—translational—point of view of the psychoanalytic interpretation up to date: as a configuration of progressively expanding bands of translational connections between and within various experiential systems, including both, the developmentally and dynamically symbolized and non-symbolized mentation.

Translating and interpreting within a thus widened semiotic field of different experiential domains leads potentially to verbally consolidated insight that has been found in recent outome studies to uniquely effect the posttherapy growth. This multidimensional process and its effect is conceptualized as an image/metaphor mediated open work in motion, enhancing unconscious and conscious symbolization and internalized representation, in search of developmentally and dynamically lost connections between the elements of the experiential systems. The clinical vignettes illustrate different aspects of the proposed all-inclusive and eventually internalized multidirectional interpretative configurations with both analyst and patient taking turns as interpreters, under the patient’s authorship.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Linda A. Mayers for her thoughtful and constructive comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva D. Papiasvili

Eva D. Papiasvili, Ph.D., ABPP, is Senior Clinical Faculty and Supervisor, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York; Training and Supervising Analyst, and former Executive Director and Dean, Institute of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society; and Co-Chair for North America, IPA Encyclopedic Dictionary Task Force.