ABSTRACT
Appreciation, a mode of engagement frequently expressed or implied in informal clinical discussion as well as published case reports, is not usually taken necessarily to imply any lapse from the analytic attitude. The object of appreciation to which reference is actually being made is not a mental apparatus but a distinct human individual. In maintaining the analytic attitude, the analyst confronts, clarifies, and interprets these seductive strategies in a fundamentally neutral manner, thereby paving the way toward the analysand’s believing that it may be safe to become a whole person engaged with whole others. From the time of Sigmund Freud’s “Papers on Technique,” analysts have been attempting to delineate the constituents of the analytic relationship. The analyst would still be accepting and using the proposition that much of this impressive work has been accomplished by the analysand unconsciously and preconsciously.
