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Recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and technique (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983; Mitchell, 1988; Kernberg, 1993; Schafer, 1994) have presented what appears to be a consistent paradigmatic shift to a relational approach in which current experience in the psychoanalytic relationship has become the critical transmutative factor in treatment. However, this apparent shift reflects a premature theoretical accommodation in which important differences between ego psychology, interpersonal psychoanalysis, relational conflict theory, and the developmental arrest positions have become lost. Differences exist in the importance attributed to, and the form of, relational experience and are reflected in the following dimensions of the analytic situation: self-disclosure, which varies along the dimension of anonymity-mutuality; power, which varies along the dimension of asymmetry-symmetry; the nature of reality, which varies along the dimension of positivism-constructivism; the narrative script, which may stress either romantic and biological or political and social explanations. There are major differences in the way countertransference is conceptualized: first, whether it is seen as a source of interference or the critical element in the patient's developing transference, and second, whether the analyst's participation is thought of as unwitting and induced or voluntary, purposeful, or strategic.
Each theory also presents a developmental model that provides an explanation of why a patient behaves as he or she does and is thought of as either a sequence of real events or as a hypothetical construction. In contrast to structural theory, developmental theory presents the emotional experience, the passion and tragedy of human existence, and represents the implicit values of analytic cure. Developmental theories provide the clinician