Neutrality

The concept of neutrality has suffered a tormented fate, much like, and perhaps even more than, that of other psychoanalytic concepts. The very term, as Hoffer (1985) points out, was invented for the Standard Edition by Strachey, although Joan Riviere had translated the German Indifferenz with the French indifference. The term ‘neutrality’, then, is absent from the texts of the Freuds, both Sigmund and Anna.

This birth defect may have lent ambiguous, or better multiple, connotations to the neutral quality of the attitude of the analyst: Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) list three fields of application in Freud, one in respect of religious, moral and social values, another concerning transference, and a third related to the various meanings that can be attributed to the patient's discourse. More recently, Franklin (1990), to whom I shall return, has pointed out as many as five. The reader interested in following the ramifications and shades of the concept of neutrality in Freud's works is referred to Laplanche and Pontalis and to Hoffer. I shall limit myself to drawing attention to the fact that those who have written on neutrality stress its connection with