The Letter 59 & 60 Summer – Autumn 2015, pages 69-76

This paper was presented at the inter-cartel meeting of The Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis (ISLP) in the Milltown Institute on 13 June 2015. It addresses the concept of inexact interpretation and its significance for psychoanalytic practice, thoroughly discussed by Edward Glover in 1931 and repeatedly commented on by Jacques Lacan.
Keywords: inexact interpretation, suggestion, therapeutic effects, psychoanalytic
treatment, the British Psychoanalytical Society, Edward Glover
Introduction
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 Therefore, the
main purpose of this paper is to study it and explore its relevance for psychoanalytic
practice. Lacan addresses the problem of the therapeutic effects of
inexact interpretation in The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
Psychoanalysis. He refers to it again in The Direction of the Treatment and
the Principles of its Power and in his seminar on The Logic of Phantasy.
Biographical note
Edward Glover was a prominent figure within the psychoanalytic circles of
his time. He was born in 1888 and brought up in a small Scottish town near
Glasgow; trained as a medical doctor and surgeon, before his elder brother
James introduced him to psychoanalysis. Both brothers came to Berlin to be
analysed by Karl Abraham and became honorary guests of the Berlin Psychoanalytic
Society, where they had the privilege of meeting Karen Horney,
Franz Alexander and Melanie Klein. …