There are two contrasting treatment techniques which co-exist within the contemporary framework of psychoanalysis—classical insight therapy (or the intervention of paternal reason) and therapy as corrective emotional experience—derived respectively from Freud and Ferenczi. Whereas the "classical" therapy presupposes the patient's oedipal attainments and addresses itself therapeutically to conflict, the "maternal" holding therapy is oriented toward preoedipal stages of development and addresses itself therapeutically to defects. The author believes that technical innovations grow out of theoretical reinterpretation and poses the question of whether either technique can dispense with the other.