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A CLEAR CONCEPTUALIZATION of the therapeutic process and of what in a relationship contributes to therapeutic outcome, remains somewhat elusive and certainly controversial in the psychoanalytic literature. Despite Sullivan's note that interpersonal acts are "reciprocal" and "transformative" (Mullahy, 1945), Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966) remark that "Psychoanalytic theory has no constructs for the dyad as such" and despite its importance, "the relationship between persons is undeveloped theoretically."
Though his main focus was not on the psychoanalytic situation, a notable effort to grapple with these questions is reflected in the work of Martin Buber (1957a), (1958), who wrote
Distance provides the human situation, relation provides man's becoming in that situation.
Buber believed that "Human life and humanity come into being in genuine meetings" and that the "inmost growth of the self" can be accomplished "between the one and the other, between men." For him the most profound growth and change in the treatment situation can only occur in the context of this kind of "personal relation." This involves what he labels an "I—Thou" relation in contrast to an "I—It" relation. It requires mutual confrontation, and he calls its unfolding the "dialogical": that condition of genuine dialogue which involves bringing oneself fully into it, without reduction or shifting ground and without holding back relevant thoughts or withdrawing. In Buber's framework the meaning of the "interhuman" is