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The subject of converting psychotherapy to psychoanalysis has long been beset by controversy. Often the argument has had a moralistic tone, such as preserving the pure gold of analysis and not contaminating the transference. Even “converting” has a religious flavor which “shifting” would not. The patient shifts from one form of treatment to another as a patient with back trouble shifts from bed rest to medication, exercise, or surgery. None of these connotations are important in themselves. Their only significance lies in whatever influence they have had in interfering with a consistent and careful study of this common clinical event. Current need demands such a study. If patients who have begun psychotherapy were to be eliminated as prospective analysands, everyone would suffer. Patients would be deprived of a possibly optimal treatment, and analysts and candidates would be deprived of both patients and a challenging experience, all because of unproven assumptions or unsubstantiated value judgments. In this paper we do not aim to prove the worth of shifting, or even its efficacy under certain