Marcondes examines processes within the analysand and the analyst. Cure is the result of incorporating an auxiliary superego; permanent transformation of the patient's superego results from successive projections and introjections. In the transference, the analyst as representative of reality enables the patient to renounce his archaic fantasy objects and thus detach himself from infantile fixations. The author rejects the 'mirror' concept of the analyst's role; this concept is a narcissistic self-protective barrier erected by the analyst against his own anxiety and fear. If the analyst is to provide the medium for emotional growth, he must reproduce the role of the parent much more actively and clearly than the 'mirror' concept permits. Otherwise he will fail to produce that alternating rhythm of identification and separation, that blend of frustration and indulgence, which are necessary for the surrender of neurosis and the resumption of growth. The analyst freed of fear and regressive counteridentification should offer himself actively as a mature and attainable ego ideal.