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This paper traces the development of concepts of the therapeutic alliance, focusing on the paradox that while transference motivates the patient to struggle with his conflicts, it simultaneously furnishes the major resistance to resolution of these conflicts. Freud described a pact between the analyst and the patient's ego against the id. Sterba postulated an ego split, with one fragment allied with the analyst and analytic goals. Nunberg, on the other hand, felt that the basic aims of the analyst are opposed to those of the patient and the analysis would succeed only if the patient 'hypnotically' idealized the analyst; 'the analyst must use the patient's wrong reason to make him do the right thing …'. Recent authors (Loewald, Gitelson, Greenson) have swung back toward Nunberg, stressing nonrational factors in the therapeutic alliance. For example, Loewald feels that an important aspect of the analytic relationship is the patient's need to identify with his own growth potential as reflected in the analyst. Friedman stresses the notion that the therapeutic alliance develops as the patient is weaned from insistence on direct libidinal gratification; this movement brings him closer to the analyst and is perceived as an alliance. If the analyst looks for a therapeutic alliance early in the work, he is making an unrealistic demand on the patient and causing himself unnecessary frustration.