Uninterpretable States: How to Stay With What Refuses to Mean

Opening Line

“Some adolescents don’t symbolise. They transmit.”

“Some symptoms don’t represent. They evacuate.”

“And some moments in therapy are not invitations to formulate, but demands to hold.”

I. The Fantasy of Continuous Meaning

There’s a quiet superstition in symbolic training:

That if we listen long enough—if we work hard enough—everything will eventually make sense.

It’s comforting. It gives us hope during long stretches where we don’t understand a thing.

But it’s not always true.

Some states refuse symbolisation—not as resistance, not as lack of insight, but as psychic reality.

These are uninterpretable states.

And our task is to stay inside them—without reaching for meaning too quickly, and without abandoning the child.

Clinical Example: “Jamie”

Jamie, 14, sits in silence every session.

Not avoidant silence—full silence.

He sometimes rocks slightly, other times hums tunelessly.

When asked questions, he repeats them back.

One day you say, “It feels like something’s here, but it doesn’t want words yet.”

He pauses.

Then: “The humming is how I keep the yelling out.”

Before this, there was no metaphor. Just signal. Just sound.

To move too soon would have erased it.

II. What Is an Uninterpretable State?

It’s not the same as resistance.

It’s not someone being difficult or withholding.

It’s what happens when the internal system that gives rise to meaning has gone offline.

What Is a Psychic System?

Imagine a house wired for electricity.

There are lights (emotions), switches (symbols), and a central circuit (thinking).

When the system is intact:

• You feel something.

• You find a word, image, or gesture to express it.

• You reflect on it without short-circuiting.

But when the wiring is damaged—by trauma, developmental rupture, or overwhelming affect—the house goes dark.

The switches still click, but no light comes on.

That’s an uninterpretable state.

The child isn’t hiding from you. The system literally cannot generate symbolic light.

Clinical Example: “Amira”

Amira, 11, witnessed a violent act no one will talk about.

She draws the same jagged shape every week.

She won’t say what it is.

You’re tempted to say, “Is that the explosion you told me about?”

But it’s not time.

The drawing isn’t a symbol yet. It’s an evacuation—

A trace of an experience that hasn’t been metabolised into meaning.

What Do We Mean by ‘Symbolise’?

To symbolise is to use something as a stand-in for something else.

• A drawing of a monster = fear.

• A poem about winter = grief.

• A game about spies = secrecy and shame.

Symbolisation gives distance.

It turns affect into image, image into word, word into thought.

Symbolisation Develops in Layers

• Ages 2–3: pretend play (a banana becomes a phone)

• Ages 5–7: stories and emotional logic form

• Adolescence: symbolisation either expands under pressure—or collapses

Clinical Note: OCD and the False Appearance of Symbolisation

Teens with OCD may sound symbolic.

They say, “If I don’t tap three times, my mom will die.”

But this isn’t metaphor—it’s mechanism.

It’s not communication. It’s discharge.

The obsession isn’t trying to be understood.

It’s trying to ward off terror without involving the symbolic mind.

III. How Uninterpretable States Appear in the Room

Sometimes you’ll sense it before you see it:

• A child repeats the same sentence, flatly, without modulation.

• A young person seems “elsewhere”—not defiant, just unreachable.

• You feel blank, or flooded, or foggy as a therapist.

• The session feels heavy but formless—something is happening, but there are no hooks to catch it.

This is the field of unmeaning.

The moment when symbolisation has stalled—or never formed.

Clinical Example: The “Glass Wall”

You’re with Leo, 16. He sits with his hoodie up, eyes unfocused.

He mumbles about a video game, then stops midsentence.

You ask a gentle question. No response.

Then, suddenly, you feel… confused, slightly dissociated, unsure what you’re doing.

This is contagion.

You’ve entered Leo’s state—his system of meaning has collapsed, and your own is bending to meet it.

IV. The Therapist’s Impulse to Interpret

In these moments, we often:

• Offer metaphors

• Echo last week’s insight

• Ask questions to reanimate the symbol

• Fill silence to prove we’re “working”

But these are often acts of self-rescue.

They make us feel competent—

But they may violate the child’s psychic timing.

V. What to Do Instead: The Ethical Pause

Staying is not passivity. It’s precision.

1. Use Language Sparingly, With Space

Say less.

And when you do speak, use language that names the absence of language.

“There’s something in the silence that feels full, not empty. I’m with you in it.”

“It’s okay if we don’t have words yet. We can still sit beside what’s here.”

These are holding utterances—not interpretations.

2. Track Your Own System

Before you speak, ask:

• Am I trying to feel useful?

• Am I interpreting to soothe my own discomfort?

• Am I reaching for metaphor when the field is still raw signal?

Self-regulation is the bedrock of containment.

3. Staying Is Doing Something

Holding space when meaning breaks down is an active, ethical clinical act.

You are:

• Containing the child’s unformulated state

• Showing they don’t need to perform coherence to be worthy of presence

• Waiting—calmly, respectfully—for the psyche to return to symbol-making

Clinical Example: “Ben” and the Breach

Ben, 13, finally opens up.

But next week, he stares through you, arms crossed.

You say, “Something feels different today.”

He doesn’t reply.

You stay quiet.

Eventually, he says: “You said it was safe, but I think I said too much.”

If you had filled the silence with insight, you’d have missed the moment.

What he needed was your containment, not your cleverness.

VI. When to Move

We don’t stay inert forever.

We move when the signal shifts:

• Affect re-enters the room

• The child gestures toward image, story, or metaphor

• The psychic field becomes “musical” again—there’s rhythm, phrasing, tone

Then—and only then—you interpret.

Not to fix the moment.

But to reflect it back—to help it become part of the child’s symbolic world.

Closing Line

“Some material doesn’t want to be understood. Not yet.

And our task is to hold that truth—without reducing it, rushing it, or walking away.”