THE THERAPEUTIC STANCE THAT is referred to as neutral is designed to protect the patient and the therapeutic situation. It is an effort to structure into the therapeutic process a nonjudgmental frame of mind. It is also an epistemological stance, one designed to permit "deep" material to come forth undistorted by the analyst's input. It is certainly true that our own reactions as analysts or therapists can be problematic. I sympathasize with the aims which have led to the precept of neutrality. But I believe that the ideas and practices associated with so-called neutrality are deeply flawed and that we would do well to relinquish our ties to that particular attempted solution to the hazards of doing psychoanalytic therapy.

My dissastisfactions with the idea of neutrality derive largely