Extending the work of H. Deutsch, H. Racker, and A. Green, the author pursues the interactional implications of the theory of transference and countertransference. The patient's representation of a relationship, reflecting the specific relation between self- and object representations, is actualized in the psychoanalytic treatment. If a therapeutic relationship is to be established, the therapist must make a twofold trial identification with the self- and object representations which the patient conveys. In the psychoanalytic literature, discussions of countertransference emphasize the object, that is, parent reactions induced in the therapist in response to patient (=child) transference. Moeller accounts for this distribution of roles as serving a relief function.