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Psychoanalysts have always, from the earliest days of this science, been concerned with the influence of clinical instrumentalities on the course of treatment. Since the days of the studies on hysteria, when Freud experimented with hypnosis and manual head pressure, the technical aspects of the analytic setting and their effects on transference, treatment alliance, regression, resistance, etc. have provoked continuous discourse and periodic review. That analysts differ greatly in their views on the ideal technical conduct of an analysis is well known. The two gifted and authoritative authors of this book come from the mainstream of psychoanalysis, and yet they have widely divergent views. They seek to compare and contrast their views through the tension created by a “dialogue,” a six-chapter conversational odyssey through numerous topical issues of practical and theoretical concern. Leo Stone, as is well known from his written work, stresses viewing the psychoanalytic situation as an adult one in which the technical details must be viewed with humaneness, reasonableness, and the analyst's comprehension of their individual meaning for the patient: “Somehow, at least in the relative sense which is so important in analysis, the cognitive and affective deprivations established by the analyst must be accepted as rational and appropriate…” (p. 48). Langs stresses firm adherence to the ground rules of the analytic “frame,” with the conviction that deviations, e.g. accepting gifts, or seeing patients' family members, no matter how well intended, inevitably have a deleterious effect on treatment. He wisely reminds us that the most useful activity of the analyst resides in accurate, well-timed interpretations, an experience for the patient that is unique to the analytic situation and unobtainable elsewhere in his life. No analyst would disagree with this, I think. However, Langs insists that other forms of intervention stimulate potentially insatiable transference demands in