When Should We Not Interpret? The Analyst’s Transformative Act as a Vital Contribution to the Patient’s Sense of Being Real and Alive

Abstract

Should the analyst do anything else besides interpret? What constitutes an act within the analytic setting? And what signifies an act as analytic? The author reviews previous contributions to this literature, putting forward the idea that the analyst’s act is never isolated from the context of the analysis and the whole of the transference-countertransference relationship. Yet, under certain circumstances, it is not interpretation or the understanding of something that facilitates the transformation, but the experiencing of something that the analyst does. Through the careful 10 examination of previous conceptualizations (enactment, interpretive act), the author proposes that the analyst’s transformative act is a conscious-spontaneous act, not a reenactment of past. This idea will be discussed in light of the idea of playing and some recent thinking concerning ontological psychoanalysis.

Keywords:

• Enactment
• interpretive act
• playing
• therapeutic action
• transformative act

This article refers to:

I Don’t Understand (Why Scrutinize the Inscrutable When We Can Un-Understand and Not-Know?)

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In Israel, an army service is mandatory for all girls (2 years of service) and boys (3 years of service).

² Interestingly, Alona named her daughter ‘Liat”, which in Hebrew means “to me you are”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ofrit Shapira-Berman

Prof. Ofrit Shapira-Berman, PhD, at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a training analyst at The Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a senior fellow at the Freud Centre, The Hebrew University, holds a private practice in Tel Aviv.