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‘Klein seems to take us to the limits of what is imaginable about psychic life’ (Stonebridge & Phillips 1998, p. 3) and brought new techniques to child psychoanalysis. She probably brought very little new to the technique of adult psychoanalysis. It was left to her followers to develop a distinctly Kleinian approach to psychotherapy, which today emphasizes the emotional immediacy of the patient-therapist relationship. This paper explores the multi-faceted nature of the therapeutic relationship in contemporary Kleinian practice by using as a template the five modes of psychotherapeutic relationship Clarkson identified from her researches, and published in this journal in 1990. Following a review of Kleinian metapsychology, the five modes are discussed individually to show in what way each is manifested in the Kleinian approach. The conclusion is that Kleinian psychotherapy contains, as part of its ontology, the five modes of therapeutic relationship elaborated by Clarkson, and as a corollary offers a postmodern perspective on psychoanalytic psychotherapy.