ABSTRACT
Held-Weiss addresses complex matters here that are addressed philosophically and/or academically than, as Held-Weiss does, poetically and pragmatically. For that reason, most discussions of these issues in the psychoanalytic literature are more difficult to read than this paper is. Held-Weiss can take this tack because she is unafraid to make the claim that psychoanalysis need not cast itself in the mold of any other discipline. In one fell swoop Held-Weiss removes psychoanalysis from the realm of what she calls 'the mechanistic model of science' of the nineteenth century. Held-Weiss's tightly woven writing demonstrates its subject matter in the act of expressing it: in reading it, that is, one has a dialogic experience with the writer. In her evocation of the centrality of 'a direct analysis of the analyst's inevitable involvement and participation', 'In praise of actuality' remains as full and deep a statement of the heart of the interpersonal perspective as it was when it appeared over thirty years ago.
