Freud's economic theory of working through was elaborated as a process of dissipation through discharge. A dynamic structural theory of change is presented instead. Whatever the danger signaling affect is, whether it be anxiety, guilt, shame, or other, the mastery in the analytic process occurs both by a lessening of its intensity and an increased capacity of the analysand to bear the residual portion without pathological outcome. Qualitatively signal anxiety no longer tends to progress to traumatic anxiety. Appropriate mature achievements resolve the craving for the perpetuation of infantile gratifications to the degree that the latter can be worked through.