Neutrality is not Neutral

Psychoanalytic discourse on the concept of neutrality is long-standing and controversial. In current times, neutrality is an evolved concept that garners some respect, but is also held suspect to the extent that it is rooted in a positivist framework for science requiring psychoanalysis to exclude extraneous factors such as the analyst's subjectivities and external reality. To become optimally neutral within this framework, analysts are required to cure themselves of extraneous factors in their own analyses. Freud's investment in the positivist approach, including the analyst's being neutral, was intended to curb the analyst's overambitious emotional stake in the patient's progress (Freud 1915). Apropos the analyst's subjectivities, the field of psychoanalysis has made a vast shift toward their recognition and engagement in psychoanalytic thinking and practice. On the issue of the place of external reality as a necessary focus of the analyst's neutrality, a signature contribution was made by Anna Freud, who viewed neutrality as an attitude of equipoised interest in all agencies of the patient's mind, as well as in the patient's external reality. So in modern psychoanalytic thinking, neutrality is not neutral as would have been required by a positivist view of science. The positivistic notions requiring a sterilely neutral analyst are considered antiquated, and in some instances harmful, with the potential to produce undue and unanalyzable regression in patients (Levy and Inderbitzen 1992).

I found it necessary to prepare this essay because of one way in which I have experienced a regressive shift toward the antiquated demand that the analyst be neutral. Specifically, I have frequently been exhorted to be more neutral in my work with patients regarding their interest and focus,