Weigert outlines principles for the psychological treatment of patients with what seems to be existential anxieties as carried out by pastoral counselors or medical psychotherapists. She describes two main phases of the treatment: a phase of confession (abreaction) and a phase of conversion (corrective emotional experience). The powerful force making for personal re-evaluation and change in inner attitude is the development of a mutually trusting and self-confirming relationship in transaction with the therapeutic partner. Within this relationship the basic trust and love jeopardized by an early breach of trustworthy parent-child relationship can be recovered and re-experienced.