Toward a Critical Realist Understanding of Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Psychoanalytic interpretation can be viewed through a critical realist lens as a provisional but meaningful approximation of unconscious processes. Critical realism asserts that psychological phenomena exist independently of theory, while acknowledging that our understanding is mediated by clinical and conceptual frameworks. Illustrated by a case of borderline personality disorder, we see how intense idealization–devaluation and abandonment rage reflect reactivated internal object relations, offering testable hypotheses rather than fixed truths. Unlike postmodern models that reduce diagnoses to social narratives, critical realism upholds psychopathology as real and valid yet insists on ongoing refinement of interpretations based on clinical data, theoretical scrutiny, and therapeutic outcomes. This stance preserves psychoanalysis’s interpretive depth and bridges it with broader psychiatric and psychological science, fostering a discipline committed to both meaning and empirical integrity.