Peterson Bradley S
Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 74, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Int J Psychoanal. 2002 Oct;83(Pt 5):1017-35. doi: 10.1516/00207570260338728.
The meanings of communications between analyst and analysand are replete with alternative interpretations and ambiguity. Interpersonal meaning is inherently indeterminate, and so too is intrapsychic meaning. Indeterminacy of meaning, in fact, is an intrinsic feature of all psychic experience. In the clinical domain, indeterminate meaning is the psychic basis for forming and sustaining neurotic patterns of behaviour. This recognition has important implications for effective psychoanalytic intervention. Despite the inherent indeterminacy of meaning, it is not true that 'anything goes' when trying to make sense of the data that comprise psychic experience. Wittingly or not, analysts employ specific operational constraints to decide which among numerous alternative, competing interpretive schemes is the one that we accept as the 'accurate' and 'true' understanding of our experience. These constraints are employed by all rational systems and are important components of scientific theories and other explanatory domains. Neurotic symptoms and compromise formations do not recognise these constraints. They make freer use of indeterminate meaning to satisfy simultaneously the multiple competing demands of mental existence. Indeterminacy underlies the intense gratification afforded by neurotic symptoms and other transitional phenomena, in that it allows us to gratify simultaneously and as fully as possible our potentially contradictory desires that conflict with social and moral proscriptions. This simultaneous gratification afforded by compromise formation is why neurotic symptoms are so intractable to treatment. If conflict is one defining feature of the mind, then indeterminacy and compromise formation are the others.
分析师与受分析者之间交流的意义充满了多种解释和歧义。人际意义本质上是不确定的，心理内的意义也是如此。事实上，意义的不确定性是所有心理体验的一个内在特征。在临床领域，不确定的意义是形成和维持神经症行为模式的心理基础。这一认识对有效的精神分析干预具有重要意义。尽管意义具有内在的不确定性，但在试图理解构成心理体验的数据时，并非“任何解释都行得通”。有意或无意地，分析师会运用特定的操作限制来决定在众多相互竞争的替代性解释方案中，哪一个是我们所接受的对自身体验的“准确”和“真实”理解。所有理性系统都会运用这些限制，它们是科学理论和其他解释领域的重要组成部分。神经症症状和妥协形成并不遵循这些限制。它们更自由地利用不确定的意义来同时满足心理存在的多种相互竞争的需求。不确定性是神经症症状和其他过渡现象所带来的强烈满足感的基础，因为它使我们能够尽可能充分地同时满足那些与社会和道德规范相冲突的潜在矛盾欲望。妥协形成所带来的这种同时满足感，正是神经症症状难以治疗的原因。如果冲突是心理的一个定义特征，那么不确定性和妥协形成则是另外两个特征。
