Neutrality is a central concept in psychoanalysis. Freud (1912) proposed the analyst as “blank screen”. We distinguish abstinence, implying the analyst's concrete decision, from neutrality, which we conceptualise as a process in which the analyst may relate his participation to the use that the patient can do of his/her own subjectivity. Abstinence and neutrality are therefore not determined simply by whether the analyst acts or refrains from acting, but by whether the implicit agreement of the setting is altered. Sometimes doing may be more neutral than not doing. Self-disclosure and enactment are device for grasping the level of neutrality well beyond the analyst's capacity to decide. Through brief clinical scenes, we suggest that the analyst's active participation in the therapeutic process is inevitable, and that neutrality involves a continual oscillation in the patient between experiencing the analyst as safe and as potentially dangerous (Greenberg 1991). Moreover, the analyst waits what use the patient can make of his participation, both through interpretations and by means of his enactments or denactments. The analyst's neutrality is achieved by using the device of transference-countertransference and by the analyst's adherence to the contract of the setting, which is central to the patient's need for treatment.