ABSTRACT
J. R. Greenberg's writing has always been distinguished by deep and subtle scholarship, elegance, clarity, and innovation. Greenberg proposes that in relational theories, though, neutrality should be redefined: 'Neutrality embodies the goal of establishing an optimal tension between the patient's tendency to see the analyst as an old object and his capacity to experience him as a new one'. In a clinical illustration Greenberg shows how preserving a particular patient's capacity to experience him as a new object required that he, Greenberg, loosen some of his usual technical procedures to be more directly responsive. He often isolates a problem or a question that may not have been defined in quite the way he does, and then he articulates a carefully organized point of view that he proposes as a resolution. Many psychoanalytic writers pursue a programmatic agenda, in which each article is intended to contribute to a larger theme to which the writer has an overarching commitment.
