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In treating patients whose psychopathology is the consequence of an early developmental arrest, the analyst must be able to distinguish between archaic pre-stages of transference and manifestations of classical transference neurosis. In such cases, the correct assessment of the quality of the therapeutic relationship enables the analyst to adopt a therapeutic stance which gradually promotes the structuralization of precarious self- and object representations. A specific type of transference-countertransference disjunction may preclude this requisite therapeutic stance. While Kohut has attributed such countertransferences to the analyst's own narcissistic disturbance, the authors suggest they are more typically a technical error of interpreting remnants of developmental arrests as if they were expressions of resistances defending against intrapsychic conflicts. Negative therapeutic reactions, they believe, may stem from failure to recognize the arrested developmental aspects of the patient's psychopathology, so that vital developmental requirements revived in relation to the analyst once again meet with traumatically unempathic responses. Successful treatment would thus depend in large part on the analyst's ability to achieve a correct empathic grasp of the patient's subjective experience in the analytic relationship.