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Joyce Slochower describes the importance of Winnicott’s metaphor of holding to her clinical work. She explains why she has sought to develop his therapeutic model to take into account the critiques of both the feminist movement and relational psychoanalysts who considered the concept representative of an overly idealised version of the mother-child relationship. The value of the relational movement’s focus on the analyst’s subjectivity is emphasised, however, she argues that there can be a need – especially at moments when a patient is narcissistically vulnerable – for the analyst to “bracket” not only her affective state, but also her understanding of the patient, as expressed in her interpretations. At such moments the analyst adopts a holding approach that remains within the patient’s subjective perspective.