This paper discusses how the reflexive has been associated with low transitivity and how a reflexive may display an intermediate transitivity status. It also offers an analysis of English reflexive data with regard to relative transitivity. A reflexive displays less transitivity than its active transitive nonreflexive counterpart, in the sense that it does not have an external agent which its counterpart clause has, and the event is described as involving only one participant. But, on the other hand, by virtue of its syntactic transitivity, it can express more dynamic, punctual processes than the intransitive counterpart. Because of this intermediate transitivity status of the reflexive, reflexivization can be either transitivization or detransitivization in function, or possibly both. I suggest, therefore, that the English reflexive should be viewed as having relative functions for transitivity rather than having an absolute transitivity status.