Theoretical Models and the Analyst's Neutrality

Abstract

J. R. Greenberg's writing has always been distinguished by deep and subtle scholarship, elegance, clarity, and innovation. Greenberg proposes that in relational theories, though, neutrality should be redefined: 'Neutrality embodies the goal of establishing an optimal tension between the patient's tendency to see the analyst as an old object and his capacity to experience him as a new one'. In a clinical illustration Greenberg shows how preserving a particular patient's capacity to experience him as a new object required that he, Greenberg, loosen some of his usual technical procedures to be more directly responsive. He often isolates a problem or a question that may not have been defined in quite the way he does, and then he articulates a carefully organized point of view that he proposes as a resolution. Many psychoanalytic writers pursue a programmatic agenda, in which each article is intended to contribute to a larger theme to which the writer has an overarching commitment.