The therapeutic effect of inexact interpretation – a contribution to the theory of suggestion : October 1931 : Edward Glover

Published in The International Journal of Psycho–Analysis Vol XII, October 1931, Part 4

Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z or Authors by Date (1931)

Glover’s References & their location

p397 Psycho-analytic interest in theories of cure is naturally directed for the most part to the curative processes occurring in analytic treatment : the therapeutic effect of other methods is, nowadays at any rate, more a matter of general psychological interest. In earlier times, of course, it was necessary to pay special attention to the theoretical significance of non-analytic psychotherapy. Statements were frequently bandied about that psycho-analysis was nothing more than camouflaged suggestion : moreover, the fact that analytic method was based on experiences derived from situations of rapport between physician and patient, as for example, in hypnosis, made some theoretical differentiation desirable. Most discussions of the ‘resolution of transference’ can be regarded as contributions to this problem, affording a rough but serviceable distinction between analytic and other therapeutic methods. And the special studies of Freud (1) on group (mass) psychology, Ferenczi (2) on transference, Ernest Jones (3) on suggestion and auto-suggestion, Abraham (4) on Couéism and an unfinished study by Radö (5) on the

processes of cure, have given a broader theoretical basis to this differentiation.

1. Freud: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Hogarth Press,

1922.See Mass (mistranslated as Group) Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego : 1921 [1922] : Sigmund Freud, SE XVIII p69-143. Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud: The Metapsychological Papers, Papers on Technique and others

2. Ferenczi : ‘ Introjection and Transference ’. Contributions to Psychoanalysis,

1916. Sándor Ferenczi : Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi)

3. Ernest Jones : ‘ The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy ‘ ; ‘ The

Nature of Auto-suggestion’. Papers on Psycho-analysis. Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1923, 340-381, 382-403. See The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy : 2nd May 1910 : Ernest Jones at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Jones)

4. Abraham : ‘ Psycho-analytical Notes on Coué’s Method of Self-mastery ‘. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1926, vii, 190-213.

5. Radó : ‘ The Economic Principle in Psycho-Analytic Technique ’. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1925, vi, 35-44.

Citation & Engagement by Jacques Lacan:

This paper was commented on by Jacques Lacan in

Seminar V,

The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis : 26th September 1953,

The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power : 13th July 1958

and Seminar XIV.

Lacan’s comments address the problem of the therapeutic effects of inexact interpretation. Links and quotes are given below.

LINKS TO JACQUES LACAN AS GIVEN BY MONIKA KOBYLARSKA

From HOw SIgnIfICAnT IS THE COnCEPT Of InEXACT InTERPRETATIOn fOR THE PSyCHOAnALyTIC CLInIC? : 13^th June 2015 : by Monika Kobylarska : Available http://whatispsychoanalysis.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Letter-59-60-Summer-Autumn-2015-pages-69-76-M.-Kobylarska-How-significant-is-the-Concept-of-Inexact-interpretation-for-the-Psychoanalytic-Clinic.pdf

Seminar V : 18th June 1958

Jacques Lacan described Edward Glover’s article The Therapeutic Effect of Inexact Interpretation: A Contribution to the Theory of Suggestion as ‘one of the most remarkable and most intelligent articles which could be written on such a subject’, and in which he added that ‘it is really in fact the starting base from which the question of interpretation can be approached.’[1*]

[*1] 18th June 1958, See Seminar V The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958) : from 6th November 1957 : Jacques Lacan on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19571106), p339-340 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation,

To do this let us start again today from our schema.

It is extremely important to articulate correctly the different lines on which analysis is

situated. There is an article which I would recommend you to read, it is the article by Glover which is called: “The Therapeutic Effect of Inexact Interpretation” (October 1931, Vol. 12, Art. 4 of the IJP).

It is one of the most remarkable and most intelligent articles which could be written on such a subject. It is really in fact the starting base from which the question of interpretation can be approached.

In fact the basis of this article and of the problem that it poses, is something which can more or less be situated as follows: at the point in time that Glover wrote it, we are still at a time when Freud is alive, but at which the great change of analytic technique around the analysis of resistances and of aggressivity has happened. Glover articulates that this analysis of resistances and of the transference is something which with the experience and the development of notions acquired in analysis, is something which implies going over, covering as one might say, in the sense that ground must be covered by the analytic progress the totality of the systèmes fantasmatiques – let us translate “phantasy systems” in this way: the systems of phantasies – which we have learned to recognise in analysis. It is clear that at that time more had been learned, more was known than right at the beginning of analysis, and the question which is posed, is: what was our therapy when we did not know the whole extent, the whole range, of these phantasy systems?

Does it mean that what we did at that time, were incomplete therapeutic treatments, less worthwhile than those which we are carrying out now? It is obviously a very interesting question, in connection with which he is led in a way to draw up a kind of general report on all the positions articulated, taken up, by the one who finds himself in the position of being consulted about any difficulties whatsoever. In a certain way he generalises, he extends the notion of interpretation to every articulated position taken by the person who is consulted, and he draws up a table of the different positions of the doctor with regard to the patient.

There is here an anticipation of the doctor-patient relationship, as it is called today, but really articulated in a way which makes me regret that it was not developed in this direction which sets out a sort of general approach. The fact is very precisely that in so far as we overlook the truth included in the symptom, we find ourselves by this very fact collaborating with the symptomatic formation.

He takes this first from the position of the general practitioner who says to the patient: “get a grip on yourself, take a holiday, change your job”, in fact who puts himself in the position of mis-cognition. Right away he occupies a certain place, which is not an ineffective one because it is one which is situated, can be very precisely located at the very place that certain symptoms are formed. He immediately occupies a certain function with respect to the patient which can be situated in the very terms of analytic topography. I will not insist on this.

He remarks at one point that the whole trend of “modern psychoanalytic therapy” in his time, is the direction of interpreting both what he calls sadistic systems and guilt reactions. He remarks that up to recent times, all this was not stressed. The patient was no doubt relieved of his anxiety, but there were undoubtedly left unresolved in him, unsuppressed, and at the same time repressed, this famous sadistic system.

Here for example is an example of the direction in which, he does not conclude his remarks, but begins them, and it is this that in our own day it would be interesting to take up again.

The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (Rome) : 26th September 1953

He agrees with Glover that non-analytic approaches

can have the precise impact of interventions that could be qualified as obsessive systems of suggestion, as hysterical suggestions of a phobic nature, and even as persecutory supports (…) For not only is every spoken intervention received by the subject as function of his structure, but the intervention itself takes on a structuring function due to its form. [2*] [*2] : The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (Rome) : 26th September 1953 : Jacques Lacan : Also known as the Rome Report. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19530926)

p64 of the Anthony Wilden translation, But if l call the person to whom l am speaking by whatever name l choose to give him, I intimate to him the subjective function that he will take on again in order to reply to me, even if it is to repudiate this function.

Henceforth the decisive function of my own reply appears, and this function is not, as has been said, simply to be received by the subject as acceptance or rejection of his discourse, but really to recognise him or to abolish him as subject. such is the nature of the analyst’s responsibility whenever he intervenes by means of the Word.

Moreover, the problem of the therapeutic effect of inexact interpretation posed by Mr Edward Glover in a remarkable paper has led him to conclusions where the question of exactitude moves into the background. In other words, not only is every spoken intervention received by the subject in terms of his (and its) structure, but the intervention takes on a structuring function in him in proportion to its form. It is precisely the scope of non-analytic psychotherapy, and even of the most ordinary medical “prescriptions,” to be interventions that could be described as obsessional systems of suggestion, as hysterical suggestions of a phobic character from the sanction which it gives to the Subject’s failure to recognise his own reality.

The Word is in fact a gift of Language, and Language is not immaterial. It is a subtle body, but body it is. Words are trapped in all the corporeal images which captivate the subject; they can make the hysteric pregnant, be identified with the object of penis-neid, represent the flood of urine of urethral ambition, or the retained faeces of avaricious jouissance.

What is more, words themselves can undergo symbolic lesions and accomplish Imaginary acts of which the patient is the subject.

The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power : 10th-13th July 1958

Although, according to Lacan, in The Direction of the Treatment… what Glover seemed to miss was the concept of the ‘function of the signifier’ and the ‘importance of the signifier in locating analytic truth.’[p9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation] Lacan criticises Glover for recognising interpretation in everything that is understood exactly or inexactly and compares this view of interpretation to a ‘phlogiston [Phlogiston – a hypothetical substance once believed to be present in all combustible materials and to be released during burning] (…) providing that it feeds the flame of the imaginary.’[p10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation] Lacan reminds us that the essence of interpretation is its effect, as ‘the signifier effects the advent of the signified, which is the only conceivable way that interpretation can produce anything new.’ [p10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation] [3*] [3*] The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th-13th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan, see this site (19580710 or Index of Authors’ texts),

p9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : To decipher the diachrony of unconscious repetitions, interpretation must introduce into the synchrony of the signifiers that compose it, something that suddenly makes translation possible – precisely what the function of the Other as harbouring the code allows, since it is in connection with it that the missing element appears.

Conceived of in this way, interpretation becomes a sort of phlogiston: manifest in everything that is understood rightly or wrongly, providing it feeds the flame of the imaginary, of that pure display, which, under the name of aggressivity, flourished in the technique of that period (1931 – recent enough to be still applicable today. Cf. [13].)

It is only in as much as interpretation culminates in the here and now of this interplay that it is distinguished from the reading of the signatura rerum in which Jung tries to outdo Boehme. To follow it there would not suit our analysts at all.

But to be up to date with Freud is a very different matter, and that is why it is not a luxury to know how to take the clock to pieces.

[13] is this text

Seminar XIV : 21st June 1967

In his seminar on The Logic of Phantasy Lacan agrees with Glover that if interpretation completely eliminates the dimension of truth it is merely suggestion. Here Lacan makes a very interesting point related to ‘the eventual fruitfulness’ of non-analytic incorrect interpretation, namely that ‘incorrect does not mean that it is false’ and he explains that inexact interpretation ‘has nothing to do with what is at stake at that moment, in terms of truth,’ but he reminds us on the same page that ‘the truth rebels’ and that ‘however inexact it might be one has all the same tickled something.’ Seminar XIV : 21^st June 1967 : p267 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation. [4*] [4*] Seminar XIV : 21st June 1967 : Seminar XIV The logic of phantasy (1966-1967) : from 16th November 1966 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /Lacan (19661116) ,

p267 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Good. But if that is it then … if it is only a pure discourse-effect, this has a name that psychoanalysis knows perfectly well and which is, moreover, a problem for it, which is funny. This, and not anything else, is very precisely what is called suggestion! And if interpretation were only something that produces material, I mean, if one radically eliminates the dimension of truth, all interpretation is only suggestion.

This is what puts in their place these very interesting speculations – because one clearly sees that they are only designed to avoid the word truth – when Mr. Glover speaks about correct or incorrect interpretation, he can only do so by avoiding this dimension of the truth and he does it, the dear man, ( a man who knows very well what he is saying) not simply to avoid the dimension – for you are going to see that he does not avoid it. Only look. The fact is that one can speak about the dimension of truth, but that it is very difficult to speak about a “false” interpretation. The bivalency is polar, but it leaves us embarrassed as regards the excluded third. And that is why he admits the eventual fruitfulness – I mean, Glover – of incorrect interpretation. Consult his text. Incorrect does not mean that it is false. It means that it has nothing to do with what is at stake at that moment, in terms of truth. But sometimes it is not necessarily wide of the mark for all that, because … because there is no way here of not seeing it re-emerge. Because the truth rebels! That however inexact it might be one has all the same tickled something.

So then in this analytic discourse designed to capture the truth, it is the interpretative interpretation – response that represent the truth, the interpretation … as being possible there – even if it does not happen – which orients the whole discourse. And the discourse that we have ordered as free discourse has as a function making room for it. It tends to nothing else then to establish a locus of reservation in order that this interpretation maybe inscribed there as a locus reserved for the truth.

This place is the one that the analyst occupies. I point out to you that he occupies it, that is not where the patient puts him!

COMMENTS ON JACQUES LACAN’S USE OF GLOVER’S PAPER BY ÉRIC LAURENT

The following are references by Éric Laurent to Jacques Lacan’s citing this paper in Interpretation – From Truth to Event : 2nd June 2019 (Tel Aviv) : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of texts by other Authors). These citations overlap with the ones given above.

The following are references by Éric Laurent to Jacques Lacan’s citing this paper. Quotes from

Seminar V

The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power

Seminar XIV The Logic of Phantasy.

Footnote references are to Laurent’s paper :

Footnote x : quote : This is why, in the 1950s, Lacan became interested in the contribution of the heterodox English psychoanalyst Edward Glover, from the 1930s, referring to his comments on the effect of inaccurate interpretation as follows:

“An article that I advise you to read on the matter is one by Glover called “Therapeutic Effects of Inexact Interpretation,”… It’s a very interesting question, and it leads Glover to draw up a general situation about all the positions taken by whoever finds himself in the position of consultant in relation to every kind of disorder. Having done this, he generalizes and extends the notion of interpretation to every formulated position taken by whomever one consults and draws up a scale of the different positions of the doctor in relation to the patient.”[x]

[x] Seminar V : 18^th June 1957 : See Seminar V The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958) : from 6th November 1957 : Jacques Lacan on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19571106),

p339-340 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : It is extremely important to articulate correctly the different lines on which analysis is situated. There is an article which I would recommend you to read, it is the article by Glover which is called: “The Therapeutic Effect of Inexact Interpretation” (October 1931, Vol. 12, Art. 4 of the IJP).

In fact the basis of this article and of the problem that it poses, is something which can more or less be situated as follows: at the point in time that Glover wrote it, we are still at a time when Freud is alive, but at which the great change of analytic technique around the analysis of resistances and of aggressivity has happened. Glover articulates that this analysis of resistances and of the transference is something which with the experience and the development of notions acquired in analysis, is something which implies going over, covering as one might say, in the sense that ground must be covered by the analytic progress the totality of the systèmes fantasmatiques – let us translate “phantasy systems” in this way: the systems of phantasies – which we have learned to recognise in analysis. It is clear that at that time more had been learned, more was known than right at the beginning of analysis, and the question which is posed, is: what was our therapy when we did not know the whole extent, the whole range, of these phantasy systems?

————————————————

Footnote xi : quote : Glover is sensitive to the aporias inherent in interpretation but does not take account of the operative value of the place of the truth as such. The phlogistic fluid in question is in fact meaning as it appears as escaping the relationship between human beings spontaneously without any basis or principle.

“This importance of the signifier in the localization of analytic truth appears implicitly when an author holds firmly to the internal coherence of analytic experience in defining aporias. One should read Edward Glover to gauge the price he pays for not having the term ‘signifier’ at his disposal. In articulating the most relevant views, he finds interpretation everywhere, even in the banality of a medical prescription […] Conceived of in this way, interpretation becomes a sort of phlogiston: it is manifest in everything that is understood rightly or wrongly…”[xi]

[xi] From The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of texts by Jacques Lacan) p9-10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : To decipher the diachrony of unconscious repetitions, interpretation must introduce into the synchrony of the signifiers that compose it, something that suddenly makes translation possible – precisely what the function of the Other as harbouring the code allows, since it is in connection with it that the missing element appears.

This importance of the signifier in locating analytic truth appears in filigree once an author holds firmly to experienced connections in the definition of aporias. You should read Edward Glover if you want to appreciate the price he pays for lacking this term: though articulating the most relevant insights, he find interpretation everywhere, finding nowhere to stop it, even in the banality of a medical prescription. He even goes as far as to say quite baldly – I am not sure whether he is aware of what he is saying – that symptom- formation is an incorrect interpretation by the subject [13]. Conceived of in this way, interpretation becomes a sort of phlogiston: manifest in everything that is understood rightly or wrongly, providing it feeds the flame of the imaginary, of that pure display, which, under the name of aggressivity, flourished in the technique of that period (1931 – recent enough to be still applicable today. Cf. Reference [13].)

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Footnote xii : quote : Because of the proliferation of meaning, Glover had the insight to grasp that the binary of the true and the false is not suited to psychoanalysis:

“When Mr. Glover speaks about correct or incorrect interpretation, he can only do so by avoiding this dimension of the truth […] it is very difficult to speak about a ‘false’ interpretation […] of incorrect interpretation […] [for] sometimes it is not wide of the mark for all that. [..] Because truth rebels! And that however inexact it might be one has all the same tickled something.”[xii]

[xii] From Seminar XIV : 21^st June 1967 : See Seminar XIV The logic of phantasy (1966-1967) : from 16th November 1966 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /Lacan (19661116)

pXXIV 267 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : And if interpretation were only something that produces material, I mean, if one radically eliminates the dimension of truth, all interpretation is only suggestion.

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Further Citations:

Quoted in notes to ‘Psychosis, Ordered Under Transference ‘: September 2017 : Miquel Bassols. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bassols)

*****

A further reference is in Interpreting Psychosis from Day to Day : October 2005 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of other Authors’ texts)

From P84 of Laurent’s text, Robert Wallerstein tried to found the IPA’s eclecticism, what he called at the IPA Congress in Montreal in 1987 its different languages of interpretation in, a both theoretical and epistemological manner, by affirming that one does not have to consider these different languages in terms of either exactness or inexactness, the torment introduced by Glover’s article in 1930, nor in terms of depth or surface, but that one should rather comprehend them in terms of metaphor.

This term “metaphor” stems from the appropriation of the works of Lacan in the seventies by East Coast psychoanalysis in the United States. …

Further References relevant to Interpretation:

NOTE Putting Interpretation into the search engine on the Home Page, will probably find more.

Psychosis, Ordered Under Transference : September 2017 : Miquel Bassols. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bassols)

Jacques Lacan’s intervention, Gestapo or Geste à peau – an evolving discussion : 30th November 2017 (London) : Julia Evans. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Other Authors’ texts)

Ordinary Interpretation : 12th July 2008 (Paris) : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Other Authors’ texts)

Interpreting Psychosis from Day to Day : October 2005 : Éric Laurent

The Seminar of Barcelona on Die Wege der Symptombildung : probably Autumn 1996 : Jacques-Alain Miller. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Miller or Index of Other Authors’ texts)

Interpretation and Truth : 1st July 1994 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Other Authors’ texts)

Greek Tragedy – Problems of Interpretation & Discussion : 21st October 1966 (Baltimore, USA) : Jean-Pierre Vernant

Julia Evans2024-06-18T17:38:28+01:00