However much is already known and clearly communicable about the nature of the analyst's interpretive activity, its effects, and its products, the fact is that large areas of this topic remain obscure or, if not obscure, open to reconsideration on the basis of technical and theoretical developments. Among the frequently reconsidered major factors on the technical side is the analytic attitude, the complexities of which are not so much specified as bounded by the indispensable idea of analytic neutrality. And among the major factors on the theoretical side is the nature of the life history that is constructed by the work of analysis.

That there is a mutual dependence of the analytic attitude and the psychoanalytically constructed life history should be obvious, neutrality being essential to effective exploration and accurate understanding and vice versa. But