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August 4, 2001. The presentation and discussion of “The Analyst's Participation: A New Look” ( J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 49/ 2) is a very interesting and important opening to critically reflect on and “identify psychoanalytic excess” (p. 360) in the relational branch of our field. Although Greenberg emphasizes his previous dismissal of classical psychoanalytic positions, which seem to him “based on an outmoded philosophical foundation” (p. 368), he is also pondering the short'comings of relational practice. His acknowledgment of the analyst's “excess of wanting to make something happen” (p. 378), and his warning, “something has gotten lost,” remind me of Goethe's poem “The Sorcerer's Apprentice”: “Spirits raised by me / vainly would I lay.…” In order to master the bewitched out—of—control broom and turn it again into a useful one'sthat is, in order to further pin down what is problematic in the interaction-oriented relational psychoanalysis,