ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the implications that models have for the analyst's stance within the psychoanalytic situation. It discusses the origin of the neutrality concept in Anna Freud's early theory, the problems which remain attached to it because of its roots in that theory, and the improvements which can emerge from re-defining it on the basis of modified theoretical premises. Freud's model of the analyst's role is based on the position of the observing scientist as that was understood in the 19th century. The stress on the need for safety depends on an important theoretical assumption that, although prefigured in Freud's late writings and in some of Heinz Hartmann's work, was developed most fully in the work of relational model theorists. The chapter suggests that there is a need to strike a kind of balance between danger and safety, which can be roughly translated as striking a balance between being seen by the patient as an old or a new object.
