The place of analyst-patient interactions in the psychoanalytic change process is much debated. This paper reflects an attempt to identify quite specific relational impacts that flow from the requirements of the psychoanalytic situation itself and are (a) essential to the psychoanalytic process, (b) inseparably tied to interpretation, and (c) of quite broad significance. Relationship factors that are idiosyncratic, iatrogenic, or that involve a nonspecific benign tone are all discussed by way of contrast to features seen as essential to the interpretive process. The published literature is heavily used to develop these points.