It can be said that the first analytic hour occurs when the patient and analyst get together for the first session. But many analysts feel that the first hour of analysis follows preliminary interviews during which a history is obtained and an opinion formed about the analyzability of the patient. In certain clinics the preliminary interviews are done by someone other than the analyst, but the information necessarily appears again in the analytic relationship. The author feels that we should speak of an initial phase of analysis since it is difficult to say which session is more analytic than another. Everything that plays a role in the decision to seek analysis—the precipitating factors that alter psychic equilibrium, the anxiety experienced, the patient's planning of how he will relate what he wants to relate—invests the first analytic hours with transference elements. Hopefully the analyst will grasp some of the more significant features, though obviously not all of them. The patient initiates his relationship with