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In this paper Sullivan first quotes extensively from his two previous papers: Therapy and Pseudotherapy in Psychiatry, given at the San Francisco meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1938, and The Meaning of Anxiety in Psychiatry and in Life, published in 1948 in Psychiatry. The two are combined, and amplifying remarks are made on the question of the nature of psychotherapy and the theory of anxiety. Fear and anxiety, which as felt experience are identical, are clearly distinguished and their differentiating characteristics described. The different dynamic rôles of sudden severe anxiety, and milder, often vestigial anxiety tensions are also discussed. It is an understanding of the latter which makes so great a contribution to the comprehension of many of the difficulties of living and also of the 'technology of therapy'. The changes induced by psychotherapy in the patient's mode of living with others significant to him may be either fundamentally and basically curative, or merely ameliorative. Many of the ameliorative procedures which can have a respectable place in psychotherapy, can also, when crudely and brashly used, become absurd pseudotherapy and do more harm than good.