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THERE IS, presently, considerable debate among psychoanalysts about the amount of patient—therapist interaction permissible and, indeed, requisite to the successful outcome of the therapeutic endeavor. Although there has been a decided consensual shift in the direction of more active interaction, less "blank screen" participation, it has not been continuous, harmonious or without acrimony. The strictly structured, anonymous therapist, the various interpersonal perspectives, the encounter therapist, and finally the evangelistic laying-on-of-hands (and, sometimes, taking-off-of-pants) therapists constitute a bumpy continuum, each station of which accuses the next most active of apostasy and self-indulgence. As in all wars, right is always on our side in the pursuit of the Holy Grail of intimacy, that special dimension of relatedness which most defines the climate of psychoanalytic change.
Intimacy, in this sense, may be considered the ambiance of engagement or closeness between therapist and patient which characterizes the "positive therapeutic alliance"—that state of good intent and hard work without which no degree of virtuosity nor depth of experience of the therapist can prevail. The concept, intimacy, unfortunately, denotes a very ambiguous felt state, difficult to formulate and, even more confusing, undergoing a continuous shift in its meaning. It is a lexical bridge; that is, a constant term