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It is difficult to define the first analytic session since the diagnostic process tends to become confused with the therapeutic process. Perhaps the first analytic session takes place when the patient, having had little contact with the analyst, accepts the use of the couch and the analyst accepts working with the patient. In Kleinian technique everything the patient says is related to the 'latent transference'. Therefore, the analyst from the beginning tries to make conscious as much of the transference as the patient can understand. Using his countertransference, the Kleinian analyst seems to take more 'risks'. In the technique based on ego psychology the task is to prevent an uncontrolled regression. Everything the patient says is not considered latent transference. In this technique the analyst waits until a therapeutic alliance, as well as a split in the ego, has developed. The goal of the early sessions is to accustom the patient to work in a dimension and modality that is unknown to him. The author illustrates his technique with borderline patients, character disorders, psychoneurotics, and candidates. He feels he has achieved an integration of Kleinian and ego psychology techniques that works for him.