In seeking appropriate terms of a code of ethics for practitioners of psychoanalysis, the author explores the nature of the transference relationship in detail, in ways that distinguish it from all other human relationships, all the while taking account of the fact that it can and must be understood in the same terms as other relationships. It is found to be a relationship established and sustained in human, as well as in specifically clinical, terms. But for all its unique clinical and therapeutic characteristics, it cannot help but be interconnected with, and responsible to, the surrounding social organization.