Many patients do not seek therapy in order to make changes in their lives but to tolerate and understand their anxieties and to work through the complex griefs that have come their way in the wake of constructive discoveries and changes they have already made. Such progressive experiences are virtually ubiquitous in the lives of most people, even those whose emotional development has been seriously compromised by early trauma.

This formulation has implications for the theory of treatment. The fundamentally explanatory nature of the process is reaffirmed. The idea of a therapeutic relationship, as opposed to the analyst's simple commitment to serving the patient's curiosity, is considered redundant. The core transferences that appear are generated not by reactivated desires for parental assistance to facilitate developmental steps, but by reactivated fears of parental exploitation of newly discovered vitality.