Therapeutic engagement, as it registers across the depth-psychology corpus, is not a single technical procedure but a multidimensional relational event that various authors locate at the generative center of change. Yalom frames it in explicitly existential terms: wholehearted engagement is the answer to meaninglessness, not because it resolves the philosophical questions but because it renders them irrelevant. For Ogden and the sensorimotor tradition, engagement is inseparable from the polyvagal social engagement system—the neurophysiological substrate that must be active before trauma processing can begin. Porges extends this into therapeutic neuroscience, arguing that the conventional face-to-face dialogue may itself misfire with traumatized clients unless the social engagement system is carefully recruited. Miller and the motivational interviewing school reformulate engagement as the first of four processual stages—establishing a working connection through partnership, acceptance, and compassion—distinguishing sharply between engagement done with someone versus on or to them. Sedgwick, writing from a Jungian vantage, insists that the emotional intensity of the therapeutic relationship, including its impasses and muddles, constitutes the engine of healing rather than an obstacle to it. Across these positions, a central tension persists: whether engagement is primarily a relational condition to be cultivated, a neurophysiological state to be restored, or an existential stance of wholehearted presence. That three such distinct frameworks converge on engagement as foundational underscores its irreducibility within contemporary depth-psychological practice.