Reconsidering Therapeutic Neutrality.

In recent decades, with the emergence of postmodern philosophies and of relational psychoanalysis, therapeutic neutrality has come under challenge as being both an impossible and an undesirable analytic stance. This article explores recent understandings of transference and of therapeutic neutrality; the position of those relational psychoanalysts who posit that explicit use of intersubjectivity is the central treatment vehicle of psychoanalysis; and presents material from the treatment of an individual with a borderline personality disorder, using the developmental, self, and object relations approach of James Masterson, to illustrate some potential dangers of abandoning a neutral stance when treating such clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]