Response to Jill Gardner’s Discussion of Interpretation as a Carrier of Selfobject Functions

ABSTRACT

Because I am in agreement with the major points of Jill’s response to my paper, I will only highlight those aspects that need further emphasis. In response to Jill’s question of what we gain clinically by my different way of understanding the therapeutic action of interpretation and internalization, I suggest that the concept of permeable boundaries helps us understand when and why interpretations become meaningful. I argue that interpretations become meaningful only when the “we” of the relationship penetrates both partners in the dyad. In other words, there must be a simultaneous experience of permeable boundaries that metaphorically opens a portal between patient and therapist in order for interpretations to become mutative. The paper then discusses how such a permeable boundary evolves in a psychoanalytic treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpretation
• empathy
• connectedness
• internalization
• boundaries

Disclosure

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ It is important to remember that permeable boundaries do not exist without accompanying tension states—erotic, aggressive, and a myriad of intense longings. The recognition of this fact helps us to be more accepting of these tension states as normal in any deeply connected treatment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard A. Geist

Richard Geist, Ed.D., is a Founding member, faculty, supervisor and personal analyst for the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. For 35 years he was faculty, part time, at Harvard Medical School and Senior Supervising Psychologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.