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What constitutes understanding in the clinical situation? What constitutes authority? How are understanding and authority managed in the relationship between analyst and analysand? These are questions very much under discussion in psychoanalytic circles, according to Owen Renik, and were the focal point of his stimulating talk on the perils of neutrality.
Renik eschewed the traditional dictum of analytic neutrality, claiming it is a misleading ideal that is not actually put into practice, and, even if it were, would be counterproductive because it fails to take into account the intersubjective nature of the analytic process. How one can further self-understanding and self-determination without unduly constraining the patient remains a perennial conflict, which, Renik maintained, is precisely what the concept of neutrality was meant to address, but which it does not and cannot do. Our time would be better and more relevantly spent, he claimed, refining principles of technique that deal with what actually takes place in the dialectic of the analytic situation; that is, a relationship in which one person, the analyst, in his attempt to help the patient manage psychological conflict, makes evaluative judgments that serve to direct the patient in one way or another.
Asserting that it is impossible to avoid influencing the patient, Renik drew from clinical material to demonstrate the usefulness of making the analyst's judgments a matter of conscious, explicit scrutiny. At the same time he cautioned that while a theory of technique can help establish the clinical conditions in which such judgments may be examined for their usefulness, it cannot prevent our judgments from being idiosyncratic and at times out of our awareness. Nevertheless, he argued, the myth of neutrality fails to protect us from this pitfall. Acknowledgment that analysis takes place between two nonneutral participants, he held, will motivate systematic study that will lead to a more useful, scientifically b