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The Therapeutic Alliance offers much more than the title promises. Meissner charts the conceptual origins of, as well as the controversies about the clinical utility and lack of clarity of the concept of the therapeutic alliance. He also elaborates and compares a complex array of clinical concepts and aspects of the psychoanalytic situation. Rather than going through individual chapters in the book, all of them rich and complex, I shall highlight the major organizing headings and the attributes that permeate throughout its contents. This volume is a work of scholarship, clarity, and precision of structure, so that readers can follow the outline and subheadings of every chapter effortlessly and study it thoroughly or browse with confidence that dividends will be forthcoming. The writing reflects a distinguished analyst who possesses an unmistakable attitude of humility for the complexity, power, and ubiquity of unconscious processes, a deep respect for the individual as ultimately responsible, and an unrelenting belief in the therapeutic value of collaboration between analyst and analysand.
Meissner unpacks the concept of the therapeutic alliance and provides a lucid repacking of many essential elements of the analytic relationship. Approaching his subject with an unwavering focus on differentiating aspects of the therapeutic alliance, Meissner does so in a way that is consistent with his previous revision of the theoretical status of the concept of the self as, “a supraordinate and structural construct with the tripartite entities as component substructural systems” (Meissner, 1993, p. 459). Synonymous with self-as-agent or the whole person, Meissner's concept of self in his earlier writing includes, but is not limited, to the subjective and interpersonal self. Just as he differentiated aspects of the self-system in that article, here Meissner differentiates aspects of the therapeutic alliance and argues for ascribing the processes of the therapeutic