A fundamental precaution in the treatment of obsessional neurosis is to avoid allowing the obsessive patient to displace his ritualistic tendencies onto the treatment. While this may produce phobic reactions, such reactions can represent the first step toward cure, corresponding to a breaking up of the defensive obsessional ritual. The treatment of obsessives must take into consideration their extreme ambivalence whereby love and hate, desire to build and to destroy, libidinal and aggressive drives, are simultaneously experienced. The importance of the correct handling of the transference and of the patient-analyst relationship are emphasized. Even more than with other types of neurotics, it is important to establish an optimum distance from the patient although it is essential for the analyst to maintain an 'attitude of presence'. Nacht believes that the character structure should be analyzed before the symptoms in these patients. This character analysis will succeed or fail according to the way in which the analyst is able to handle his relationship with the patient.