This book begins with Strachey's statement of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis representing the classical psychoanalytical technique that prevailed in the 1930s. Then Meissner takes up the shifts in thinking that have subsequently evolved. Today we hold a more relational concept of the therapeutic action based on a developmentally rooted, parent-child model. This places greater emphasis on the vicissitudes of relational involvements than on specific interpretive techniques. Emphasis is given to collaborative efforts between patient and analyist as central to the working of the analytic process. Factors such as empathy, interpretation and positive and negative transference to the therapeutic alliance are explored.