DISCUSSION OF ′ON NOT INTERPRETING: THE METAPHOR OF THE BABY, ENACTMENT, AND TRANSITIONAL EXPERIENCE,′ BY JOSEPH NEWIRTH

摘要

On first glancing at the title of Joseph Newirth's paper, "On Not Interpreting: The Metaphor of the Baby, Enactment, and Transitional Experience," I felt provoked by the unsettling notion of not interpreting as at all possible. Not interpreting in psychoanalysis for me, is akin to not breathing. -Second, I was put off by what seemed to me to be a jangle of uncoordinated signifiers—metaphor of the baby, enactment, and transitional experience. But after reading the paper, I became a believer—not in all that Newirth offers or in his conclusions, but in the thumpingly good value of his undertaking, in the scholarliness and clinical sensitivity his paper displays.